


Xenodochy

by the_milliners_rook



Series: wonderfully wandering alone [1]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alice in Wonderland, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Disoriented Perception On Reality, Dream Sex, Dreams, F/M, Nightmares, Surreal, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-17
Updated: 2012-07-17
Packaged: 2017-11-10 04:06:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 34,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_milliners_rook/pseuds/the_milliners_rook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He keeps dreaming of this place, night after night, a recurring dream that is never the same. In which Toushirou becomes Alice in Wonderland, and Wonderland slowly seeps it's way into reality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. try not to mistake

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the bleachbigbang on Livejournal.

“I’m sorry.” The girl says — at least, he thinks she’s a girl, he can’t see her face — leaning over the table and pouring a cup of tea. “It’s not that you fell, as much as it’s that I kicked you in.”

“Oh.” Toushirou blinks, seven and a half years old. How strange, to have fallen down a rabbit hole. He’s terribly young and he’s terribly short — and he supposes, if there’s anyone who could be accidentally kicked down a rabbit hole, it would be him. “Are you sure?”

“Quite. I’d never hurt such a sweet boy on purpose.” The smile is clear in her voice, cheeky, warmth of the sunset. He thinks he’d like to see her face to know if she’s being sincere. “Would you like some tea?”

He wrinkles his nose, and sits with his back straight, head raised high. It’s a very comfortable chair that he sits in, so he must resist the urge to slouch. Besides, slouching encourages shortness; his granny reminds him often enough. Since this is a tea party, he should be polite to his host, or so he tells himself. “No, thank you.”

“Suit yourself.” Her shoulder lifts and falls, and with a gloved hand, she drops a sugar cube into the cup, the faint plop echoing through the plate of shortcakes, fairy glitter lifted by the breeze. Transfixed, Toushirou watches a lily-pad begin to grow in the centre of the tea cup, fragile petals unfurling and blushing pink before him. The teapot continues to pour, steady in her hand, and it’s like a magic fertilizer, liquid reaching the brim of the cup yet not spilling. “More for me.” She murmurs absent-mindedly.

Toushirou blinks again and waits for the tea to overflow, expects it to stain the pretty tablecloth with moving fishes and turn the ocean brown any second now. But he waits, and it doesn’t. He turns to look at her again, amazed, and her face hidden by the curtain of jet black hair.

He opens his mouth and — “Excuse me. Do you know how I can go back? I have school tomorrow.”

“But of course.” Verdant stalks entwine round a plate of chocolate chip cookies, tiny leaves beginning to shoot out, curl and Toushirou wishes that he’d reached out and grabbed one when he had the chance. The stalks keep growing, and soon a different kind of flower blooms, petals technicolour and singing. She puts the tea pot down. “Twelve steps backwards, that’s all it takes. Crumpet to bid you farewell?”

He shakes his head, the taste of butter too golden on his tongue. “Could I have your hat instead?”

“That’s a better parting gift.” She agrees with a tilted nod and complies, removing her hat in a theatrical manner; and Toushirou is surprised and unsurprised to see the face of a hare staring at him, eyes bright, eyelashes thick, whiskers twitching, tease of a smile apparent — and she places it gently on his head. The air is rich with the scent of peppermint. The brim of the hat slants and touches the tips of his ears.

Toushirou wakes up in his bed that instant, alarm clock ringing shrilly, the mockery of laughter, and the dream already forgotten.

Time to go to school.

 

*

 

He’s fifteen when he returns to the technicolour fantasy place — twice as old, but by no means twice as tall and he just doesn’t get it. There are flowers in his dream that turn to him, chortling as he crouches down, and looking at him like he’s their sun made of shadows and when he sits down, cross-legged, not quite sure what to say or how to go about it; they sing, and Toushirou listens. He looks at them and feels the textured grass; he closes his eyes and feels the sun warm on his face. He closes his eyes and wishes that he could wake up, but instead he hears their voices unite in a song, and it’s a very long time until they stop and one of them begins to talk to him, petals soft and fair.

And if he looks, properly looks, he’d have known that they had wept for him instead of cradled the morning dew. But he doesn’t, tentatively touching their velvet skin, and listening carefully to their garbled words, too high-pitched to be coherent to his ears. But it’s pretty, so very pretty, and their song hides the sound of a tick-tick-tick of his alarm clock until it’s too loud to ignore.

He dismisses the dream when he wakes up, fingers tangled in his hair, pushing away loose curls. That’s all it is: a pretty dream.

The difference being that this time, he thinks about it, recalls it with unnerving precision and suddenly the world he lives in feels unreal, spun on it’s axis and kept on an angle. He considers telling Momo about it before they get onto the bus because he can’t shake the dream off his mind, but then she smiles at him, and fixes her pigtails, and he knows that she’d just call him silly. So he says nothing, because he’d rather have that than her laughter. He has her laughter anyway, when she asks him how she looks, are these pigtails okay, and he tugs one of them gently, checking that they’re fine. Her hair is soft and slips through his fingers like ocean water.

Momo holds his hand when they sit together on the bus, when they’re certain no one can see. Toushirou lets her because it’s comfortable and warm, and he knows that she likes the feel of it against her skin. Toushirou lets her because he can’t say no.

Because it’s gentle and there’s no thorn stuck in his thumb when he brushes over her knuckles.

And it’s skin against skin, not leaf against skin, as he tells himself to calm down, as the bus rocks from side to side when the wheels go over the tracks. Momo is his anchor.

 

*

 

A butterfly lands on him, and Toushirou blinks and opens his eyes. He wonders why he knows her, why he can’t see her though he knows she’s there. He looks through the creature’s vertebrae and sees only the blue sky divided by a paper thin line. Stick-thin and teasing, it’s with a start that the strawberry blonde wings extend and cover the sky. He jerks upwards, surprised by the sudden blockage of blue. But he felt the weight of the butterfly’s feet against the ridge of his nose the entire time and maybe he shouldn’t have been so surprised. He doesn’t even realize he’s let loose a startled cry until he’s tackled by someone human-sized and all at once he’s pushed down into the ground.

“Aha!” A boy says, scruffy hair pressed into his neck, arms shaking as he clings on to Toushirou, squeezing tightly. “I have you now!”

The butterfly is most definitely laughing at him, trilling at both, flying in loop-de-loops and smiley faces.

“Um.” Toushirou blinks. He is a little bit more than confused, and a little bit more than disorientated. “What?” Except his words are muffled against fabric, and what comes out sounds like: “Whuh?”

“… oh.” Disappointed, the boy lets go of him, and Toushirou looks at him properly, mussed up and dirt-stained clothes, knees scraped with mud, and a gardener’s overall. “Aren’t you the cabbage thief?” He sounds perturbed as he speaks, black hair slowly falling onto his dark blue eyes. In vain, he tries to move it away, but it’s a lost cause, it flops and obscures his face once more.

“No.” Tartly, Toushirou can’t help but reply; sitting up so he’s at eye-level with the boy. “I’m not.”

The gardener looks like he’s about to burst into tears, and he must remind Toushirou too much of Momo because he still can’t say no to her either, not when she looks at him like that. There are twinges of guilt stabbing at his chest, even though Toushirou knows he deserves to act the way he does. People don’t get tackled and accused of theft for a vegetable he doesn’t even like and expect to be treated politely in return.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Toushirou offers instead of an apology, feeling awkward about the whole situation.

The gardener gazes at him, chewing on his bottom lip, and then looks at the butterfly with orange wings, and cups his hands together and beckons for the butterfly to land. And for one moment, whilst the scruffy looking person stares probingly at it, Toushirou frowns and thinks that it would be a terrible opportunity if the life was snuffed out before his very eyes. He inches closer, almost protective of the familiar creature.

“It isn’t you either.” He says sadly, and the fragile creature flaps its wings and lifts itself up into the air, before landing on his mop of black hair, seeking to comfort and not knowing the words. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Well,” Toushirou mulls over the situation and furrows his brows. “How about—”

But he never does get to suggest what the gardener should do; waking up while the world drenches through his clothes, alone and bruises trembling as they grow.

 

*

 

Afterwards, he’s never quite certain how the boat doesn’t capsize immediately, but the woman in a white summer dress offers her hand, hair fire bright, and the man in white pulls him out of the river that he’s suddenly standing in. He’s completely soaked waist down, and it doesn’t take two shakes of laughter from the lady in white to realize that he’s here again, just like he’s been for the past two nights before.

“Oh, you silly goose,” Orihime, the White Queen-To-Be, smiles dazzlingly, and offers him a towel, as well as a seat on the boat. “You’re stepping on the fishes.”

For all he hopes, there is not enough dream logic in the world to give an answer that Toushirou can deem satisfactory. He shrugs and looks away. “I didn’t mean to.”

The White King-To-Be understands, and continues to row the oars, water rippling through every stroke. He’s not very good at it though, but Toushirou says nothing as he eyes the algae floating by. The wind ruffles his hair, and the white, white swans with black, black visors bow their heads at the soon to be monarchs passing them by, if not intertwine their necks to form a heart that longs to beat. Orihime cheers her fiancé on with his endeavour, and then joins him with the paddles, grabbing one of them and scooting over to where he sits; energy vibrant with every push she makes. Uryuu slides his glasses up against his face then lets his fingers rest on hers. Mostly, they succeed in making a circle.

“Are you coming to the wedding?” She enquires, sincerity crystal clear. The sky is such a clandestine blue above them, the river is such a clear blue below them, and Toushirou thinks he should say no and decline, but as he looks at the pair he suddenly recognizes them. In the world he lives when he wakes up. They’re a legendary couple made of stitches and patchwork quilts, older than him that he only knew of them by reputation, and heard they eloped one day and Momo cooed at the romanticism, telling him their many stories, the countless creases of the fabrics, whenever she wanted to spill some gossip. In truth, Toushirou has forgotten nearly all the anecdotes, though he tried his best to be an attentive listener, despite not being interested in the oddball couple from the very beginning. He wonders what they’re doing at the real world, wonders why they’re here in his dream world.

He clears his throat and remembers that he hasn’t said anything at all. “When is it?”

Ishida Uryuu’s cheeks are a dull red. “We don’t know yet.”

“But when we do,” Her tiara is made of diamonds, and it shines like a collection of fireflies hugging each other on a dusty night, “will you go?”

He wonders if they’re married in the real, waking world.

“Yes,” Toushirou says with conviction he didn’t think he’d muster up, and he means it. He’ll go if he can. He’d like to be there. “I’ll go.”

This is what causes the boat to capsize: the White Queen-To-Be throws her arms over him, and the boat topples under the unexpected rush of momentum, the last thing Toushirou expects is to be surrounded by fish, and hear the King-To-Be suggest that he better grab the rods now, dinner is practically waiting for them, pre-cooked; and none of the slithery, glittery fish scarper at his words. Orihime laughs, and it never occurs to Toushirou that he might be joking until then. There’s a fish that keeps nudging the crook of his elbow, and when he looks through the waves, past the odd refracted light and its emphasized angles, he feels like there must be something he should say.

In the end, Toushirou settles with a murmured “hello.”

It sounds too formal to his own ears.

But the fish shakes her tailfin, and opens her mouth, bubbles of lost words and lost messages emitted underwater. It’s enough.

The White King and Queen-To-Be promise they’ll save him a seat.

 

*

 

The aftermath always hangs over him like sunlight filtering through the curtains, unyielding and not to be denied, creeping under his eyelids through whichever means possible.

He’s slow to wake up, groggily getting to his feet. His granny tells him that this is a good thing, as he throws off the bed covers: he needs to sleep as much as possible to grow, grow, grow. Slow to rise means that’s he’s quick to grow. It is breakfast logic, his mind tells him, flirting with dream logic and rationalizes the sentence. All is well.

Except all is not well. Not well at all.

The dreams are too strong, too vivid; and Toushirou begins to hate sleeping, because when he dreams, he’s there. In a world where blades of grass are sharp enough to cut, where logic defies all reason and it hurts to look at something so bright. It’s like an acid trip — he’s never taken drugs, but Toushirou imagines that this can’t be much worse than that, bright and cheerful and spiders on his skin and stars shooting out of his eyes. He’s learnt to swallow down that urge to vomit, most mornings. But this must be something akin to hell, dressed up in pretty colours and rainbow wings, propped besides a baseball cap.

The worst moments are the parts of the day that he finds himself missing the shape-shifter, the girl who was a flower, the girl who was a fish, the girl who changes every time he sees her. She greets him with a smile every time, twinkling prettily in her eyes. When he thinks of her, it’s not so bad. No, it’s just the rest of the psychedelic world that’s driving him up the wall. But she’s part of it, and that’s what’s worse.

She’s the flower whose leaf curled up in his hand; she’s the butterfly that fluttered on his nose; she’s the fish with the dappled scales that nudged him again and again and leaped in the air especially to splash river water on his face. She’s ever changing but he knows it’s her every single time, and when he’s with her, he can’t bring himself to hate to place.

“What am I doing here?” He asks, and he’s breaking, he must be breaking, lying on a huge hairy orange cushion that breathes in an uneven beat. Strands rise and fall, rough against his flat palms, a strange breathless warmth compared to above. Toushirou looks at her, and she’s human, a beautiful human being with strawberry blonde curls and blue-grey eyes, and she holds his hand as they lie side by side. She reminds him of the White Queen-To-Be, but finer in a way that he cannot explain. He wonders if this place has a night time. Her gentle squeeze isn’t enough to put him together. “I don’t — I don’t want to be here.”

“Oh, Toushirou.” She says helplessly, hands soft as she reaches out to cup his cheeks. Soft, warm, all too real to simply be just a dream. He doesn’t know her in the world that he lives when he wakes up. But here, he knows she’s a fish, a flower, whatever she wants to be, and now she’s a human that sits up and leans over him, fingers stroking the contours of his face, sliding around him like a spring breeze, and she’s kissing him. She kisses his forehead, his eyelids, the corner of his mouth. Like it’s enough, that anything that happens here is going to be enough, and her kisses are going to mend him because they’re the best equivalent to delicate glue. “I’m sorry.” She says, voice a low rumble, and kisses him again, tousling his curls at the back of his neck. Her lips are soft. “I don’t know.”

He kisses back and licks his way into her mouth. He kisses her back because he can’t think, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing, what else is there to do, but she’s prettier than the Queen-To-Be, and he doesn’t want to see her cry. He can feel saline streaks on his cheeks, and it runs down his throat, and her skin is damp, and he can’t think. His pulse is racing, and he’s trembling beneath her, trembling with every collarbone scraped with sweat, each collision that leaves him gasping. He rolls his hips and mouths “I love you” against her skin when he pretends he can’t hear the way she whispers “I’m sorry” into the small of his back. There must be a way that she can come with him, out of here, away from here, he tells her, but—

It doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter, but it does matter, and he wakes up alone with his name on her mouth, and he hates it. He rubs his eyes before his feet touch the floor and if his eyes are a little bit red around the edges before he brushes his teeth and hits the shower, then he ignores it.

 

*

 

“Come on.” Momo says, and takes his arm as she leads him through her house, cotton sweater brushing against his skin. They’re staying together for the next two weeks because Momo’s parents are going for a holiday, and Granny has asked him to be a good neighbour and spend time with her. “Movie night. You get to pick a scary movie.”

“Did you order pizza?” He asks, and frowns appropriately. He knows all about pizza in healthy food documentaries.

“Better.” Toushirou nods approvingly. “I made it.” She must sense his doubt, and is quick to add. “Homemade food is a thousand times better than ordered food.”

It’s true. Toushirou knows this. Still.

“Scary movies?”

“Only for tonight.” Momo says, teeth biting at the corner of her mouth, a nervous tic of hers that she does unconsciously, or whenever she tries to be someone she’s not. Her cheeks darken under his gaze, and Toushirou relents. He’s never been a fan of horror, is all. The exception being horror-comedy, where the comedy overrides the horror, in theory. “I thought we could watch something different.”

“’kay.” He is rewarded with an earnest smile, and Toushirou briefly smiles back. “But we’re watching My Neighbour Totoro after.”

“Deal.”

Momo shrieks and holds onto him, furrows her nose into the creases of his shirt, legs tucked underneath one another, hands holding tightly onto his arm, as the horror unfurls with the murders left, right and centre, and the two of them are alone in a darkened room with the television as their only source of light. Toushirou remains silent, but even he feels relieved once the credits start rolling, and Momo is slow to let go of him.

The horror is washed away by the tranquillity of the next movie, but Toushirou’s can’t quite allay his heart until Momo starts smiling once more and joining in with the roars and the theme song, pleading at him to join in with the making the plants grow scene, and he succumbs with a deep sigh. There is a reason that this is her favourite film, and both of them fall asleep before the film ends, not enough smoothies in the world to keep them awake.

 

*

 

He becomes a weary traveller, the path clod filled with dust. He climbs trees and talks to bugs, careful not to ruin this twistedly beautiful, textured world. His grief seems to have made it more striking, and he learns to appreciate it in a way he’d rather not. There are bumblebee girls and griffin boys that cross his way, skeletons that dance and sirens that sing to them, he watches them from afar, but none of them are the girl from that night. She’s disappeared from the dream, taken by the tide, and Toushirou looks high and low, helped by oysters and falcons. He searches but he never finds.

“Have you seen her?” He asks, trying to pronounce her name the way he breathed it since that night, but it’s wrong, the syllables off, the slip of the long, soft cadence at the end, to no avail. But he persists, travelling far, visiting plenty and he won’t give up. There are scrapes on his hands and knees, a punishment that he has to pay. “She changes form. Like — like, a shape-shifter, or… I don’t know, an Animagus.” But comparing her to an Animagus isn’t quite right, and Toushirou can’t compare her to a Youkai because that isn’t correct either. It wasn’t one creature but many, and when he really thinks about it, she didn’t reach the standards of Japanese folklore. “She was a butterfly once, wings the same colour as her hair when she was human.”

“Hm. Can’t say that I have.” A sunflower says, taking pity on him. He dips his sunflower head and causes his green spine to twist, leaves quaking in a follow up ripple. “Still. You’ll see her again.” The sunflower is much more optimistic than Toushirou is. “If not here, then somewhere over there.” He gestures awkwardly.

Toushirou follows the line of sight. He sees mountains and meadows and springs and glaciers. He’s travelled through half, and many more. He’s tickled a mountain into a fit of laughter and seen it fall apart into rocks, and explored the thousands of crevices left it his wake. He’s seen beaches of pebbles, of sand, of skulls and of tears, and not once was there a glimpse of her. He’s had bruises and scratches left on his skin, briars and thorns, prickling at the blood that lies underneath.

“But—” She changed from every time he visited, and who’s to say when he sees her again — for the first time — it’ll be in a shape that he won’t recognize?

“I’m surprised you recognised her so many times.” Another sunflower chimes in, angling it’s petals towards the starving sun. Toushirou glares. “Plenty of shifters have seen you, many more times than her.”

“I don’t know how I knew it was her.” He says it quietly, and swallows down the memory, the brush of tailfins and velvet petals. He presses his mouth into a thin line, and breathes slowly. “But I did.”

“Well, that’s love.” A third sunflower sighs wistfully, joining in the conversation. “It makes exceptions to these kinds of things. The heart knows, looks past shape, size and colour.”

“It’s just the brain that needs a bit of work, eh?” The first sunflower tries to make him feel better, and Toushirou thinks of all the romance novels Momo reads, the hero, the damsel, and all the clichés that live in between. His heart feels heavy in his chest.

It’s too idealized a thought for a cynic, and that, Toushirou supposes, is why he agrees with the latter.

“Cheer up,” the second sunflower says, deciding that his friends sharing the patch of turf don’t have the greatest pep talk skills. “You see her, you don’t. Life still goes on, you know?”

It doesn’t make him feel any better, and Toushirou sits down, tucks his chin under his knees and waits for the moment he wakes up.

 

*

 

“Do you think hope is a thing with feathers?” Momo says, red shoes contrived to the ground while she pushes herself back and forth on the swings, not daring to fly just yet. The park is an interesting place to hang out, because most children don’t play, leaving the place vacant. It’s a pity, this loss of innocence, where friends are made and where they first met, not as neighbours but two children trying to reach the top of the slide and scuttle down headfirst, and being friends ever since Momo took a shine to him, and Toushirou decided to be a gentlemen — after a careful look from granny, and she had waited for him at the bottom, where they could both ride the merry go round at the same time, sand in their shoes.

“It’s seems like an odd thing to imagine.” Toushirou shrugs, never considering it before. How does someone picture hope, and attach feathers to it? Hope is many things, a light in the darkness to some, but not feathered.

“I think cats should have feathers.” His best friend pensively says, and lifts her ballerina feet from the ground. She was made for dancing.

“That’s stupid. Cats have fur.”

“Wings. I mean. Cats should have wings.” Toushirou watches her through the metal chains, and the unsynchronized swings they make, not quite sure what to make of her reasoning. “Cats with wings. Catwings. Catlings.” Her chin digs into her chest, and Momo pushes harder against the ground with her brilliant idea as momentum. Her hair is short and her fringe cuts across her forehead in a way that makes her look like a new celebrity, pretty and untouched, flying away at the breeze. She reminds him of a pixie, fairy dust anklets clacking together like a footstep crushing snow when her legs knock against her knees, nearly hidden under her lilac dress. “That’s what I’d call them.”

“Yeah?”

Doubt is lost when Momo smiles contentedly, slightly goofy but sweet. “Yeah.”

 

*

 

He figures out he’s Alice in Wonderland the day Momo tells him with bangles on her arms and a floral t-shirt that she’s gotten into her university of choice, and she won’t stop hugging him, won’t stop touching him because this is wonderful, brilliant, fantastic. Wonderful, she repeats like a broken record, eyes glassy and pretty pink cheeks flushed, absolutely wonderful. Except, it’s much later when it makes sense. But that day is the catalyst, in more ways than one.

And then she kisses him, and it’s been months since the girl who was a fish and flower and petals and scales made his chest ache. Momo tastes of grapes.

“I.” She stops, falters, blinks her violet eyes at him and lets her cheeks turn apple red. “I promised myself that I would do that if I got in.”

“Oh.” His throat is dry, and maybe it’s the first time in a while that Toushirou is glad that he’s still a little bit, inches, really, shorter than his best friend. It makes looking down a lot easier when avoiding her eyes.

“Did I — was that — okay?” It’s Momo. His childhood friend who was practically inseparable from him when they were growing up, who favoured her namesake fruit over his delectable watermelon; she cries when she laughs, and her favourite colour is the rainbow, one colour for every day of the week, though she likes to rearrange the spectrum occasionally, but never coordinates it with her clothes. He likes to think he’s known her inside and out, partly because she wears her heart on her sleeve and he can read her like an open book, and as introspective as he is, she can do the same. She reads his mind with a painted fingernail on her lip, and a telling expression that says she’s six steps ahead of him, skipping on her hands and knees. It’s Momo, and she’s scared, because she’s crossed a line that’s never been crossed before. Not for them. Not for Momo and Toushirou, sandbox buddies forever. They made a pact the day, as Momo likes to call it; Toushirou got his head out of the clouds and noticed that they were neighbours.

“Yeah.” He stands on toes and leans up just a little bit, and his lips brush over hers. One day, he thinks with a smile, he’ll be taller than her, and this will be reversed. She’ll be the one standing on her tiptoes, and he’ll be smirking and reciprocating their chaste kisses. “This is good.”

“Just good?”

He cracks a smile and looks at her. “Well. Maybe a bit more than that.”

She hits him good-naturedly, and wrinkles her nose, and that helps blur the clear line into a more welcoming smudge more than blueberry cupcakes on a rainy day ever did. She laughs, incredulous. He doesn’t mind.

Momo spends the rest of her summer constantly at his side, not that it differs from previous summers much. She’s his best friend, she reminds him with a cheeky smile, that’s never going to change. What does change is that she can kiss more than just his cheek and she can hold his hand as long as she wants, and their fingers absolutely have to intertwine. Eskimo kisses are also fun, but are only done after they’ve climbed the tree to get across the other side of the window and stay in for late night conversations.

It’s slightly cutesy, but he can handle it. The transition is much more subtle than Toushirou thought it would be, and that line, if there ever was one, is indistinguishable now.

He makes her happy. But her eyes don’t lie, she can never lie to him, not even when she half-heartedly tries. Her honesty is clear on her face. He knows that as much as she’s happy, elated to be his girlfriend and he her boyfriend, she’s sad, and she can’t hide that from him. She never could. But they have fun. They have fun together, and they are happy. Their happiness is like an hourglass, limited intimacy until all time runs outs, but that means nothing to them at the start. She’ll cherish this summer because this is the summer that everything changed, that she mustered up the courage to tell him how she felt, that his heart beat for hers. And she doesn’t regret it, that clumsy kiss where noses bumped, and their mouths clashed in a painfully, innocently, Momo manner. She tells him that she wishes she had confessed sooner because their romance has bloomed like the sakura trees, left too late to darken in the sun. He rolls his eyes and says she’s being silly. He loves her.

She clings on to him and cries on his shoulder the day she has to go, suitcase packed neatly to the side of the door. Out of sight she might be, further than she’s been from him before, but never out of mind. That she promises. She’s only a phone call away. That he promises.

He’s not sure which of them becomes more of a lip-parasite that summer.

Sixteen and eighteen, best friends and lovers, bitter and sweet; he could think of a thousand labels to describe them, but in the end, goodbye is still goodbye.

 

*

 

The night she goes, he dreams of Momo in Wonderland. He’s been running for days in his dreams, looking everywhere, while his legs pull him in one direction and then lead him to another. Scuffles he hears, broken branches, and leaves askew, left floating after him; the clues aren’t telling enough. Toushirou has no idea what’s been leaving him a trail for him to evidently follow. He’s bent forward on his haunches when he notices her for the first time, sitting serenely on a giant rock. She wears a pretty white dress, the type that wedding dresses are made out of, sugar and cotton candy and it cuts at the knees. Her legs swing back and forth, and her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. There’s something glassy about her, delicate and breakable. But then, Momo’s not looking at him directly. She’s looking through him, beyond him, acting as if he’s not there. Someone else stands in his place.

It’s the first time he’s dreamed of someone he actually knows. The thought leaves a strange taste in his mouth.

“Momo.” Toushirou says, helplessly. He can scarcely hear his own voice, the weariness all over again. “I—”

It’s Momo the White Rabbit, Momo in a pretty white dress. Momo with slender hands and coltish legs, windblown hair and dainty cheeks; Momo who stands up and turns to run, running like he’s never known her to run, not after buses or trying to get to the garden to pick up a daisy and then rush back to their room first. Not even in their New Year’s race, first to the park and home.

He runs after her.

She leads him through marshy fens and shallow streams; and he chases, chases, chases. He can’t outrun her, but he can catch up. He can run fast enough to reach out and touch her — if only she looks back and gives him the chance. He can. If she.

“Come back!” He screams until his throat is sore, and the worst part of it is that he held her hand and kissed her and watched her leave in the car through the window, and he couldn’t say it to her face in reality. He’s saying it now, to her back, in a dream. Look at me. “Momo, please.”

But she did look. Hand pressed to the window as she sat in the seat of the car, mouth weakly upturned until honesty wears her smile down, Momo looked at him until his figure was too small and indistinguishable to see anymore.

The White Rabbit doesn’t turn to face him, and Toushirou wades against the raging current, struggling to keep his path straight, struggling to keep her in his sight. The tick-tick-tick chants like a mockery, pressed to his ear.

Here Momo glides, feet tapping soundlessly across glades, feet barely pitter-pattering against the twigs that bend beneath her, while Toushirou moves gracelessly and clumsily, everything snapping in two with every step he takes.

He’s tired, so fucking exhausted, and supporting himself against a tree to take a minute to breathe. Head downcast, he notices a golden pocket watch. When he looks up, scouring the area, Momo is gone. Dizzy, heart pounding, breath catching, sliding down on the tree; finally, finally, Toushirou gives up.


	2. what you have with what you hate

It’s different every night. Each time he falls asleep and reappears in Wonderland, it’s another mark on the providence of the scale that Toushirou can’t map. He treks from glade to glade, travels underwater and converses with selkies, and Toushirou can’t tell how far he has to explore to find a place he’s been before. He’d like to see the King and Queen-To-Be, and learn if they’ve had their wedding yet; he’d like to find the gardener and ask him if his luck has picked up. He meets them once and never again, and Toushirou hates the fact that he met them at all if it’s just a one time meeting. They’re not characters in books, he’s talked to them, and so they’re real. Be it strangers he’s never met, he thinks about them and that leaves him feeling strangely empty.

 

*

 

There’s a new transfer student at the start of his school year that goes by the name of Kuchiki Rukia. Her brother wants nothing but the best for her, and might frown when he learns that she’s going to join the drama club and marching band. But her happiness will override his concerns, she reckons, especially with the help of her big sister. Although she’s grateful to her brother for all that he’s done, especially when regarding her sister, it’s not as if she’s going to prioritize being the star of the show over good grades. It’s unlikely that she’ll even get in the marching band because she doesn’t play an instrument, but it’s the effort that counts. She has hopes that maybe they’ll lend her a baton.

Toushirou knows this because he’s assigned as her partner to show her around school.

Were he not her fellow student tour guide, this is what Toushirou would know: Kuchiki Rukia is in his class, she has black hair and blue eyes, she holds herself with poise, and has an open smile. Judging by the key ring on her satchel, she also loves cute things. Cute things like Chappy, and maybe Mogeta.

He doesn’t know if he likes her or dislikes her yet — though he’s fairly indifferent to most of his classmates anyway — and watches her struggle with a juice box, her tongue sticking out as she furrows her brows when she tries to succeed in the simple task. But he can tell that this year is going to be a long one.

“Here, can you—” Rukia pushes the juice box into his hands, resignation mingled with frustration.

“Yeah, sure.” He doesn’t quite sigh. He holds it back, takes the straw from her bony fingers, lifts and aptly—

Sighs.

The juice box, it turns out, is the enemy of all.

 

*

 

Momo sends him photos of her new life, her friends, her university through emails, though she prefers texting to that, and talking on the phone to that. She’d talks to him as often as she can, and usually it’s late at night, so that granny don’t catch them whispering to each other. He makes her laugh with his dry comments, and knows she’s curling her toes when he murmurs I love you, I miss you in the phone and wishes that they were face to face now. She promises that she’ll be back soon, and that becomes a different sort of lifeline he holds onto. He counts the days with an x on the calendar, and waits. Reluctantly Momo hangs up, and Toushirou can’t fall asleep, can’t let go of the phone afterwards. The tree outside rustles with the wind, shaking so badly the leaves are being plucked apart; and Toushirou’s throat tightens imperceptibly.

 

*

 

The Duchess lives in a cannonball house and her temper — or so the Cheshire Cat says — lights quicker than a match against a fuse. And that is quick indeed.

The Duke, the Cat continues, its eyes gold and fur flaxen, would much rather fight than sit here and play cards. But the Queen considers him too old to put up a fight, much less one of entertainment.

In that vein, the Duke with his eye-patch and spikes as decorations from his battles cuffs the Cat’s ear. And the Cat bares its teeth and shows off its scowl because not only it’s bitter about getting hit, but it’s a sore loser that can’t keep its comments to itself. How they wound up playing Heart Attack, Toushirou will never know. He found himself at a… uniquely designed house, entered and well, here he is. The entire scene reminds him of the Dogs Playing Poker painting, in a fit of odd surrealism, because he’s never played either game before and this room is a clutter, haphazard curios strewn everywhere. The so-called temper, truth or not, is a useful reaction skill for this game, in any case.

The Duchess grins lopsidedly and scratches her pet’s furry ear; she sends the cards’ flying as the round is won. Toushirou can feel the earthquake crawling up his spine.

“So who are you today?” She asks absentmindedly, while the Duke collects the deck into a neatly haphazard pile.

Bizarrely, the Cat answers, whiskers bristling, sharp. “Hiyori.”

If he squints, Toushirou can see her fur darkening, the stripes against her face decreasing in size. Hiyori purrs and closes her eyes, and the Duchess smirks as she continues to lavish attention on her pet’s ears.

“Knock it off.” The Duke drawls, audibly bored.

The Cat frowns and its eyes open like a shutter when the Duchess acquiesces. Her anger continues with mistaken judgement and making wrong calls instead of making comments that eat away at people’s brains, boggling them with a sly smile. Her claws pierce the paper cards as her irritation grows and it’s a ticking bomb, more evident with every biting comment she makes to his banter, souring at every angle of being the loser. Nothing he can say stops it, and the Cat lashes out horribly when her temper completely snaps and the Cat disappears, manifesting behind Toushirou and digs her claws into his spine, taking him along. He feels every particle of his being shrink and stretch, materializing into the swimming pool seconds later simply because he finally won the round. It’s not a pleasant feeling.

It’s an even worse feeling to suddenly be soaking wet and feel a pink tongue of a bubblegum pink Cat licking his cheek. Or biting it, to be more precise, half a second later, furry cheeks rubbing affectionately. The flaxen Cat is nowhere in sight.

Inside the house, both the Duchess and the Duke are laughing their heads off, guffawing gratingly at the sight, banging at the table; while outside, water dripping through his eyelashes, Toushirou has never been more flummoxed in his life, with a pink Cat perched on his shoulder, licking him and murmuring happily that he’s standing in the shallow end, water just below his chin.

 

*

 

Rukia settles into school like any high school student does, Toushirou tells Momo, typing in their latest adventures in the bookstore and discussing Lord Of The Rings. They’ve just started their reading competition.

She makes her acquaintances; she makes her friends, and generally has a good rapport with everyone she converses with, though her speciality goes to the drama department, not the baton waving department. But none of them, she informs him one lunch time, have passed the juice box test.

Toushirou can’t help but lift an eyebrow at that, emptying the contents of his lunchbox on the table.

“It was a test?”

“It is now.” Rukia says with an impish smile and hands him a Capri Sun. “Now with more squeezable cartons.”

 

*

 

He finds a stairway made of nooks and crannies against the grey rocks of a cliff and hears a waterfall wailing in his ears as he explores and descends on the uneven steps. Droplets of water skittishly jump onto his skin, and make his clothes slightly damp, but he’s not drenched, so he counts that as something. He’s not sure how he doesn’t lose his grip, slip or trip over the rough edges that could only loosely be described as stairs, and a banister, roots emerging from the cliff edge few and far between, serrated rocks cutting his fingers.

There’s a lake at the bottom, a river that winds up where Toushirou doesn’t know, and an ocean of pebbles and pavement slabs that are infinitely easier to walk on.

Curious, he follows the path, and finds himself staring at a big, beautiful book embedded in the rock face. It’s taller than he is. He touches half the spine that juts out from the cliff edge, the blue hardback dressed in velvet skin and adorned with gilded cursive handwriting that is difficult to decipher, half-concealed by stone. Slanted, and only half-visible because of the spine, when he takes a good look at the front of human-sized book, the spindly words title the book as ‘The Dodo’.

He takes a breath and pulls the book open, expecting it to be harder than opening a pocket-dictionary, yet it opens effortlessly, without much strength needed at all.

Toushirou glimpses at a flicker of a person, brown hair, pale face, a splatter of jangled words that are neither coherent nor placed in a linear fashion, and that exact second is where the dream ends. He opens his eyes and waits for the alarm to ring in his ear, seconds before it does so, quickly silenced. Toushirou frowns at the fact that he didn’t get a good enough look at what lay inside the book. He wonders why his one of his hands feels cool, his dominant hand that opened the book as easily as pulling a bowstring.

There’s a word inked on the back of his right hand, a golden scrawl, but he can’t understand what it means.

It takes a week to wash out.

 

*

 

“I’m always going to be your best friend.” Momo says, idly sitting on the swing-set, hands resting on the rusty chains.

They last a year before their relationship falls apart and they find themselves drifting from each other in that romantic sense. She visited him during the holidays, met Rukia and bonded over fussing over him and teasing about his grouchiness; they never really stopped talking to each other, but the correspondence between them had widened with the length of time passing. Twice a week, once, then every so often before the month runs into the next; the phone calls had abruptly stopped when exams had to be taken, and both of them were busier than they liked. Momo tells him about her roommates, Renji and Kira, and the odd adventures they have and Toushirou smiles at the photo on the computer screen, because she was glowing that winter’s eve; and Toushirou tells her about the school’s drama production, only realizing later that he’d been photographed as he walked across the stage draped with broken mirrors when he saw himself on the school magazine, Rukia hitting him on shoulder with the rolled up magazine in mild fondness and asks him how can he be so unobservant?

His nails dig into his knees, just enough so he can feel a sharp stab of pain. “I know.”

Momo sighs, blowing at her too long fringe. “It’s kinda like a bad cliché.”

“Probably is.” Toushirou agrees.

“Maybe.” Momo hums, fidgets, then asks, earnest faced as she turns to look at him properly, without rose-tinted cheeks and with glossy lips. “Wanna get ice cream?”

His fingers curl into the palm of his hand, pads of his fingers pressed gently to not cause crescent moon indents. He feels five again, and there’s a heavy lightness of being that surrounds them, weighing down his shoulders. “Sounds good to me.” And that burden is lessened.

He wonders if this should hurt more — two best friends failing at romance. It’s not that they didn’t love each other, but it wasn’t enough. And that’s a stupid cliché all in itself. But they’d seen it coming during the third term and all they needed was the confirmation that things were well and truly over. His heart doesn’t race when he looks at her, not like it used to. Hearing that it’s over somehow makes it easier to breathe.

They get off the swings at the same time, and there’s that awkward pause about what to do next. Before either of them move, Momo extends her hand, an unsure expression on her face. An olive branch in the making. They used to hold hands all the time and think nothing of it. Toushirou freezes. He can do this.

He takes her hand, glances at her painted nails interlocked between his knuckles, and realizes that this has always been their preferred version of hello.

A smile begins, and Toushirou can feel her relief, tension gone between his shoulders. He wonders if she still likes to dance in the rain.

They’ll be okay.

 

*

 

In a coppice of springs, sylphs find him at the epicentre, roaming with ondines and morgens, limbs spindly and slender boned. They surround him, and open their mouths to produce sounds of a babbling brook, reaching out to tenderly touch his skin. Two creatures of the forest approach him. One wears a hat with rabbit ears, fluffy cloud white, that doesn’t quite match the frown on her face. She murmurs something and a tall fairy girl beside her replies just as incoherently, glancing reprovingly at her, and then turns to face him. She guides him onto a bed, and he is too tired to fight, still dancing on a slippery road of droplets. Except that the road is grass and not concrete. He still dances, feet moving like he’s flying, pushed towards a silver birched bed.

“Just sit tight; we can fix you in a second.” The first sylph tugs at her braided lilac hair, hanging over one shoulder, and then turns to speak in a language of strange bursts, that the other girl frowns even more deeply. His sight is blurred, under lowered eyelids, but he can still see her magenta hair outlined against her cute black outfit, and hear her huff hotly.

It doesn’t stop her from gazing at him critically, dark eyes narrowing as she surveys him. Her mouth opens once more, eyebrows furrowed, and evidently distasteful, she directs her conversation with the other girl; arms crossed her chest, shoulders hunched inwards.

“It’s alright.” The milder spoken sylph mumbles, and directs him to a hospital bed. “Don’t mind Riruka.”

The other sylph snorts, and quirks an eyebrow, she shakes her head and mutters something that sends her pigtails dancing. Her hands fly into gestures, tangle into her hair, before she rests the flat of her hand on his forehead, words still spitting out of her mouth in a continuous stream, and the first sylph with gentle eyes’ face burns brighter red as every second passes.

Glitterdust floats everywhere, like pollen drifting on a breeze; it falls onto his clothes, the sylphs’ hair, and on his heavy eyelids.

“It’s just a fever,” she translates, and her earrings chink together, as she brushes the dust off her soft looking hair. “Sleep.”

The second sylph, with a bad temper and her hand still on his forehead, pushes his hair back, gathers the glitterdust and blows it away. His eyes close when he feels the weight of her hand press against the angle of his jaw, and she murmurs something throaty, before everything falls away to the touch of cool fingertips.

When he wakes, alone in his cushiony bed, his fever is gone and the morning birds are singing.

 

*

 

He doesn’t expect to meet Rukia in Wonderland. Nor her sister Hisana, who is almost a carbon copy where appearances lie. The similarities pretty much end with the stripy summer dresses because Hisana seems to be the more docile out of the two, which is true outside Wonderland as well. Rukia flashes him an electric smile when she sees him, as if she’s seen him countless times before, and he supposes it’s true, and emphatically gestures him to join them on their merry adventure of picnicking.

Hisana offers him brownies and he takes one with a shy murmur of gratitude. He’s never quite certain how to act with Hisana, slightly more demure than he’s known from her counterpart. He wants to ask if it’s because of a lack of a wedding band on her middle finger, but doesn’t ask. If he does, he might ask about another couple that exist in this world.

“Can you tell who’s Tweedledee and who’s Tweedledum?” Rukia challenges him and Toushirou tries to make an educated guess based on sheer dumb luck. Whether he’s right or wrong, he never knows, because neither bothers to correct him and Toushirou contents with that. Hisana rewards him with a smile, and Toushirou secretly tells himself that he was right. Rukia flitters to her sandwich instead, and takes a bite, bare legs outstretched.

They sit on a meadow of daisies, and without preamble Rukia pulls what could amount to be a bouquet of daisies out.

“But what about their larynxes?” Toushirou asks blankly and his friend rolls her eyes.

“They don’t have one. We checked.” She says, assuring him and digs her nails into the base of the stem.

“Waltz of the bumblebees is riveting to any flower.” Hisana laughs and Toushirou is a little startled to realize that she’s joking. She gives him a mischievous smile not so dissimilar to Rukia after all, and Toushirou tentatively smiles back. Without further ado, she begins to knot the daisies together, and Toushirou supposes that he should join in with the daisy chaining as well. Upon further inspection, none of the daisies have faces, no mouths to converse with and no eyelashes to blink with, and therefore logically assumed that they had no larynxes either. But his nails are worn down, and it’s hard to break the leathery skin than originally perceived.

He’s a fumbling daisy chainer, both of them teasingly call him when they inspect his work, and Toushirou can’t help but grumble at his clumsy half-knotted, half-pieced ‘work of art’ and ask them quietly if they could connect it for him. Hisana does it with a smile, says its no problem and gently places his crown of daisies on his head.

They recline on their reigning meadow, their throne a grass stained chequered red blanket shared by all; hands outstretched and nearly touching. Toushirou can feel their warmth shooting off like firecrackers, it lights the darkening sky and places the stars across the ocean of night.

Rukia giggles in his ear. “You, me, and sister three; rulers of a world that here it be.”

“You think that’s why I’m here?” He can’t help but wonder at the possibility, turning to face her; is he meant to ascend to a throne he doesn’t want? Rukia doesn’t answer.

“You’re not satisfied with the kingdom you have now?” Hisana asks softly, and her smile is pressed teasingly against his shoulder, the stripped whisper of a breeze.

“I like it just fine.” Toushirou assuages, shifting slightly to stop the blanket from itching his back. Underneath them, bluebells start to grow.

He doesn’t ask about Byakuya.

 

*

 

Rukia doesn’t act any differently to him when he sees her again at the start of the school year. She doesn’t mention their kingdom filled with the denizens of non-larynx daisies and wind-chiming bluebells, that she was Tweedledee or Tweedledum, and that her sister was there as well. She acts the same as she always has, and invites him over for the weekend so they can have a Studio Ghibli medley, though he corrects her that it’s a Studio Ghibli marathon.

Porco Rosso has always been Toushirou’s favourite, while Kiki’s Delivery Service is Rukia’s. The problem is they can’t decide which to watch first.

This just means that they’ll get The Adults to decide with a flip of the coin at dinner; Byakuya flipping the coin and Hisana calling heads or tails. Byakuya does however; look at them as if he knows that he will find their pictures in the dictionary if he searches for petty children who should learn to grow up, or, more succinctly: brats. The Kuchiki sisters are either oblivious or used to his death glare, while Toushirou cannot successfully ignore it and helps himself with preparations for the movie marathon from food in the kitchen, to be neatly stacked upon trays and dishes.

He’s always astounded by the size of her house, how spacious the interior is. It’s airy, light flowing in from the windows, and it causes a warm glow to unfurl in his chest. Rukia, however, is comfortable in her natural habitat, and therefore doesn’t hesitate to ask if he’d like popcorn or onigiri for the medley-marathon they’re going to have, as well as an assortment of late midnight snacks, prior to changing into more comfortable clothes; it’s a jarring contrast. The house is big, but it’s not empty; that much he can tell as Hisana’s efforts have made it homely. Lived in with neatness. Still. Toushirou straightens a picture on the wall when he thinks no one’s looking. They won’t mind. (They haven’t the past two times.)

Hisana greets him with a smile. Like Rukia, she acts as if she’s never known his dreams. He doesn’t know if he’s sad or relieved.

But he smiles, nods, all the same; and feels like a stranger that’s stepped into the wrong world. Everything is different, shifted slightly that’s noticeable but not discerned.

When it’s dinner time, Hisana smiles even more brilliantly at her husband.

That’s what’s missing from Hisana in Wonderland; Toushirou thinks to himself, this is the difference about Wonderland-Hisana and this Hisana, that lightness of being. That touch of love takes a different form in Wonderland, circled with garlands and stripy clothes.

Do they know each other in Wonderland? Is Byakuya even there?

 

*

 

Sometimes, when he visits Wonderland, he only catches short glimpses of the providence before he wakes up, not enough to say or do anything. He lasts split seconds there, long enough to remember details, but not enough to remember everything. Toushirou sees treacle wells, a garden made up of butterflies, an orchard trapped within the sunset; tiny moments easily stolen from a memory save the weight in his pocket. Sometimes he wishes he dreamed of nothing at all.

He finds himself in the middle of a forest one time, violets singing the songs of ticking clocks and exploding jacks, the afternoon mist creeping through the forest, and there lies a Cheshire Cat, fur bright green, tail swishing in a lax fashion. Its eyes gleam impassively in the twilight hour.

“Hey—”

Just like the mist, the Cat vanishes in tendril of smoke and leaves the shape of a wickedly curved mouth made of ash to dissolve at his touch. He wakes up on the floor; legs sprawled awkwardly on his bed, sheets askew.

 

*

 

Toushirou hears many things about the Mad Hatter before he meets her for the first time. Whispers, mentions, slander. He’s not sure which parts of the gossip he should believe, and so takes none to heart, but keeps them all in mind. Sometimes he’s just missed her, flowers chatter to him merrily, other times, he’s gone before she arrives. She leaves her hat in the oddest of places, assuming, of course, that it is her ever-changing coloured top hat, bowler hat, pith hat. He’s found it in cotton pink lily pads, shrunk to the size of leaping frogs, he’s found it resting on the constantly turning head of a night owl, and he’s even found it in the bottom of the ocean, where mermaids were trying to glue seashells to the ribbon to make it look prettier. What exactly is the Hatter doing, he asks the girls with fishtails, but they don’t answer and beckon him to travel on the back of a tortoise-sabre-toothed-tiger, and scratch its furry shell. It’ll take him to the surface, where its friends might illuminate a path.

Falling out of time does no one any good, dragonflies with wings made of moonbeams murmur in unison, before they tell him what seems to be tall tales of a girl with ebony hair, a deceptive smile and a mordant sense of humour. They settle on his knees and his upturned palms, and Toushirou watches them in fascination when their wings glow as the sky turns completely clear and moon becomes unhidden. Light bounces off their wings, refracted into the ocean. It’s a beautiful sight to witness at midnight.

It’s a pity he can’t bring a camera and scrapbook all the things he’s seen.

The day he meets the Mad Hatter is the day he falls out of an apple tree and hears a piano being played while he falls. The tree apparently couldn’t hold his weight, and rumbles it’s apology through the skeleton roots. The sun feels exceptionally warm today, too hot on his skin, and the sky is a rich sapphire, all the more because his head is spinning and Toushirou is more dazed than he’d like. He wonders if he’s fallen out of bed as well. The clovers beneath him reach for him and nuzzle his skin, and it soothes him. Music keeps playing, only pausing slightly when the crash unfortunately happened.

He closes his eyes and lets the piano sing. He breathes in and smells peppermint. He feels drowsy for some reason.

The music slows down, and a voice ventures in a bored drawl. “Should I leave you be, or would you like me to help you up?”

“A few more minutes would be nice.” Toushirou says, and hears her laugh, while bashing a tune on the keys that sounds dysfunctional chaotic and harmonizing in a pretty paradox. “Would that be alright?”

“Just until the tune is over.” The girl replies. True to her word, she leaves him be until the melody comes to its end, and the earth swallows the echoes of her footsteps as she walks and eventually sits besides him. He opens his eyes when the breeze stops ruffling his hair, and Wonderland becomes tranquil for the time being, and glances at who he assumes to be the Hatter for the first time.

She looks like she’s his age, fine featured, and with a crooked smile on her face. Her hair is ebony and her eyes are youthfully blue; in between her fingers twirls a flower that’s been subjected to a lot of paintball explosions, colours splattering across the petals. Her hat is absent, and Toushirou can smell peppermint stronger than ever as she leans forward, simply taking him in, hair falling on her face. He wonders where he’s seen her before for her to be part of his figment of imagination, a simple blink-and-miss-it person where their eyes met for a fractured second and passed through each other like ripples on water. He read somewhere that the mind cannot conjure up random people; imagination takes the split second seen people from the crowd and integrates them within his consciousness. He must have seen her before, before she was here. The same goes for the girls he loves. Theoretically.

“Did you know,” Karin the Hatter begins, after she introduces herself, “that I once told a lie and lost my Hat in the process?”

He sits up and shakes his head. “Shouldn’t you have made another?”

Her grin widens and it’s sad to look at. Her clothes are impossibly red, and her skin appears so much whiter in contrast, a porcelain doll draped in too ornate decorations torn in style. There’s a ridiculous ribbon tied neatly to the side of her neck that Toushirou wants to remove, simply pull at the tether and lay her neck bare. Karin reminds him of a gothic Cinderella, clothes ripped and frayed, and yet she is very beautiful. Despite the lacklustre shadow passing under her curved mouth. “I could. I’ve made many, in fact.” She admits ruefully, tilting her head almost to consider that very idea. “But none of them were my Hat, and that’s the difference, see.” He doesn’t, but the Hatter continues, holding eye-contact. “Do you think I could get it back?”

“Sure.”

Her eyes light up, and with her free hand, the Hatter reaches out to card her fingers through his hair. Except instead of that, she pauses and lifts a top hat out of thin air. It’s rich and plumed and decoratively coral red. Toushirou feels his hair muss with the lifted weight, and he stares at her. He closes his mouth when he realizes he’s gaping.

The Hatter’s expression turns amused, mouth upturning with every word. “You didn’t know?”

“How long — has—” Toushirou breaks off, and sits up to face her at eyelevel. “No.”

She places the hat, her Hat, on her lap and her eyes flicker back to him. “Hm. Well if you didn’t, then I suppose nobody else did either. Things hidden in plain sight tend to unveil themselves once the jig is up.” The Hatter purses her lips and thinks, casting her gaze to the skies. “I think that’s about right. It sounds it, don’t you think?”

“I suppose.”

They lapse into silence until the Hatter loops her flower into the rim of her Hat and stands up. The flower is juxtaposed between two clockwork needles, both different sizes and shapes. The grass crunches beneath her as she returns to a wooden table, stretching as far more than just one person requires. The piano he heard before is interwoven with a golden kettle, sporting more spouts than needed. She plays an arpeggio and with an organ huff, coloured smoke rises from them, mingling as the notes are made. They soar higher and higher and dither away instantly once the wind extinguishes them with the slightest puff.

“C’mon, I want to throw you an unbirthday party, if you please.” She gestures a little uselessly at the table, and Toushirou complies, using his limbs to move instead of lying still. “Sit.”

Karin snaps her fingers and a tablecloth with lions and unicorns appears. They duel with marshmallows as she places the cloth over her table and straightens the creases, but neither can use the sugared plum as a weapon of choice; and shy away once the toast appears, avoiding coasters and china white plates as if they’re bombs instead of shelter.

“I know a few magic tricks.” She explains, and Toushirou smiles politely at her in response. She snaps her fingers again, and in her hands is an unbirthday cake, dressed with strawberries and lace, coated white underneath. There are balloons tied to several chairs and a tea pot, and without success cannot lift either object. “Do you like it?”

They’re surrounded in a garden, and tall tiger lilies embrace the rusty fence and filter the gaps between the bars. He can see orchards behind the iron gate, bending to a path that he has not chanced to explore. There are posies climbing at the edge of the table and rhododendrons behind that. The sun flares above them and Toushirou takes a bite out of the cake. It’s bubbled chocolate. The Hatter grins and drinks her tea, deciding to use her table as her seat, and the creatures living in the tablecloth accommodate her with sour glances and traitorously try to stab her with cheese crumbs. She just laughs at their effort and snaps more balloons out of thin air to tie on the arms of chairs and her kettle-piano.

“It’s remarkable.” He says, telling the truth and Karin nods.

“That’s one way to put it.” Karin leans back, and Toushirou can’t decipher her tone, whether she ponders or lets it be. “My sister, the March Hare, planted the seeds and watched them grow. For us.” She sighs, and pushes back a lock of hair that falls to her eyes. “But the Dormouse has never seen it.”

“Where are they?” Toushirou asks her. He slices the cake into smaller pieces.

“They’d be here if I knew the answer to that.” Karin shrugs, and slides off the table onto the grass. The unicorns and lions don’t cheer now, they make a mess with the jam sandwiches before they still and watch what happens next. It’s almost sweet how they form an outline around her, protectively huddling near, but cannot bring themselves to touch. “I don’t know how to find them.”

It doesn’t feel right to remain sitting in his chair when she has to look up in order to talk to him, so he settles onto the grass and joins her.

“I’ve been searching.” Karin admits quietly, dark eyes probing him, “for a very long time.”

Her lips press chastely against his cheek, and the scent of peppermint overrides his senses, the lids of his eyes feel heavy. She feels small in his arms, digging into the crook of his neck and Toushirou lets her.

“Don’t go back.” Her muffled voice reaches him, and Toushirou’s forehead brushes hers. “Please don’t leave me here.”

Above them, balloons slip free from their bindings and the Mad Hatter is very much alone.

 

*

 

He takes to driving his cobalt blue car whenever he’s in the mood to just explore the city through traffic currents and red-yellow-green lights afterwards. He’s not sure what part of the dream causes the change, but Toushirou catches himself looking at the pedestrians whenever his eyes aren’t on the road, and wonders if they’ll reappear in birdsongs and wind cascades. Rukia joins him most of the time because she wants to buy shaved ice and would rather be a passenger in his car than take the bus home. If he’s feeling generous, he lets her drive, then regrets it half-way down the street, partly because it’s a lousy car, and partly since Rukia is a driver that can’t keep her complaints to herself. She swears that her first car won’t be as awful as this one — it’ll be something sleek, something stylish, something that will have a rabbit keychain attached. Toushirou doesn’t doubt it, and tries in vain to doze away to a happier plane.

There are a million bruises and dents on Toushirou’s car; each of them serving as a reminder of the way Rukia accidentally keeps him awake and how he should stay alert when he’s the driver and the passenger, because his father will always jump to the occasion of being an experimental grease monkey, and Toushirou would rather put his trust in a mechanic than his father.

When it’s time for exams, his car gets confiscated. It’s supposed to be incentive, for him to cram and concentrate.

He walks to the park instead, the closest escape he’ll get to wandering about and wasting time. He feels the air on his face, and tries to count the ever changing ducks, though he never tries to feed them. It helps him think, just to sit on a bench and do nothing at all.

Momo sends him another email, and wishes him luck. She won’t be here for the summer — house hunting is serious business, it seems, and she’s got a deal with her roommates. They want a better house. She promises that she’ll photograph her new home as soon as she can, and then she’ll be on her way. She can’t wait to see how much taller he’s gotten.

At some point, he gets addicted to watching an anime that features the latest superhero teaching valuable morals about the importance of friendship and not caring that much about the love interest, implied or otherwise. His father promptly decides that its due time to stop holding the car at ransom and Toushirou humours him and takes it around the city to make it feel loved; and so Toushirou finds himself sitting on the hood of his car, looking at the sleeping city below and feeling terribly out of place with everything.

He’s restless, adrenaline thrumming through his veins as he has yet to come to his decision, and it keeps him from falling asleep. He could roll a dice and pick a number, or flip a coin and leave it to chance except neither of them would help, and Toushirou finds himself wishing for the drastic and the impossible just so he could have a distraction.

He wants to speed and break the law, driving too fast until the inevitable car crash happens. He wants to pull down the moon so that gravity changes the shape of the earth.

But he does neither because they’re too ridiculous to even consider. Instead Toushirou glances at the battered phone in his hand, lights blinking sleepily at him. He scrolls through his contacts, at all the people he could call and all the people he’s never going to, and deletes every single one of them.

Those that matter, they’ll find their way back.

He rubs his eyes and tries to suppress a yawn. He can’t fall asleep in his car again. Not when the last time caused him to end up upside down and walking in a field of hyacinths and a sea of clouds lolling underneath. The engine groans and wheezes slowly on the tarmac, in that infuriating manner that defines the very essence of his car, and Toushirou resist the urge to break this stupid wreck of a car. He settles with gritting his teeth and kicking the pedals instead, metal clanging underneath.

It doesn’t make him feel any better.


	3. it could leave, it could leave

His roommates at university are not what he expected. Keigo is loud, brash and painfully idiotic within seconds of knowing him. Mizuiro is polite and offering a smile at every opportunity, cutting remarks backhandedly left, right and centre at his friend with fondness, and Keigo, squawkingly retorts back. It’s an odd thing to see the reverse occur, but they’re a two man show, and everyone else is just the audience who on occasion are allowed to join in and make them both fools. Toushirou can’t help but bemusedly notice that they compliment each other. When he learns that Rukia is staying at the same house on campus, Toushirou is surprised, and also relieved.

“You didn’t think you’d get rid of me that easily, did you?” Rukia smiles at him, her hand resting on the golden door knob, other hand still holding onto her suitcase. Her mirrored expression of surprise has softened into amusement.

“No, of course not.” Toushirou replies easily enough with the barest hint of a grin.

 

*

 

“You pose too much.” Toushirou complains, and snaps another photo, regardless.

“I do not.” Rukia protests, outrage more apparent as her face reddens, and twirls around to stamp her foot and catch it on the camera — if he can press the shutter fast enough and not capture the blur instead, ha, ha! “Liar.”

“Whatever.” He tosses the camera to her, and doesn’t blink as Rukia scrunches her face while she fiddles with the buttons and loops the strap around her wrist, since her Nii-sama has taught her how to take photo’s properly. “Don’t say smile.”

“… how about using those vampire teeth?” Rukia suggests, turning the camera vertical. Courtesy of Hisana, that, but only in aid of Halloween and not Photos For Momo And Gran And Probably Byakuya And Hisana Too.

“No.” He will, however, advocate a little bit of frowning. And relent with a small smile after several prodding techniques.

“Hey Keigo, can you take a photo of us being pretty together?” Rukia calls to their roommate and pinches Toushirou’s cheek so that he doesn’t even think about frowning. Not while she’s in the picture. “You get permission to delete any frowny faces.”

“It’s my camera!” Toushirou narrows his eyes at the stranger that he doesn’t know that well.

“Mm, and whose hands are they in?” Rukia places her hands on her hips. She’s learnt Byakuya’s fierceness well and with a roll of his eyes, Toushirou gives in and half-smiles at the camera.

 

*

 

It’s a Tuesday when he sees her. Completely by accident and exploring the city with Rukia — looking for the nearest bookshop, and semi-debating if he should get a job — Toushirou catches sight of a lion-haired girl on the other side of the street, colour lightened underneath the sunlight. When she trades sun for shade, her silky hair becomes copper like the autumn breeze, and her cat-like grin remains equally as blinding as before. She doesn’t notice him, talking to a companion and making exaggerated gestures with her face and her hands, and sways her hips flirtatiously on the other side of the street.

He blinks, and realizes belatedly that Rukia has just hit him with her shopping bag. The pain hardly registers. But he looks at her and frowns.

“Be grateful it wasn’t the cup of coffee I’m about to buy.” Rukia’s no-nonsense behaviour takes the form of arms akimbo and an arched brow, completely unimpressed.

The response to that should have been out seconds later, but it stills, trapped in his throat, and Toushirou can’t. He can’t think.

His lungs shrink and flatten, avoiding the skeletal embrace of his rib cage. The world spins underneath him, and he’s thrown out of loop.

“Hey.” Rukia’s hand grips his shoulder, squeezing kind-heartedly, worried and everything slides back into focus. Her violet eyes search his, darting anxiously at him. For a second, Toushirou lets his gaze slip past her shoulder, in thin hopes of seeing her again, before he blinks rapidly. She and her friend are gone. “Hey. Are you—” Rukia stops and tugs on his arm, leading him to the nearest café, and guides him towards a chair, head spinning and nothing registering but the sound of her voice. “Forget about my coffee, you need it more.” She says, pushing the warm plastic cup into his hands.

His hands are shaking as he swallows down the liquid in the cup, gulping too fast that he chokes and coughs.

“Take it easy.” Rukia’s fingers catch onto his wrist. She says nothing about the trembling and he’s grateful for that. “Are you okay?” Rukia asks again, waiting a while after she lets go, knitting her brows in the meantime.

Toushirou doesn’t answer immediately, mulling over her question instead. His eyes lower and observe the tremors slowly come to a halt. His head is pounding, like he’s just suffered a migraine, and he can feel the rush of blood radiate from every pore of his skin. If he said ‘yes’, it would be a lie. 

He’s mad. He’s going mad. If he’s not mad already, he’s must be on his way. He’s dreaming about fucking Wonderland, and he’s found—

Her.

Without a doubt, it’s her.

“Just… tired, I guess.” Toushirou exhales and closes his eyes. It’s not exactly a lie, but it isn’t quite the truth either.

“Term hasn’t even started.” Rukia says. He doesn’t have to look at her to know that her eyebrows are rising in wary surprise.

“Nerves, then.” Toushirou finds another possibility with a shrug. Opening his eyes, he reaches out and takes another sip of coffee. He sips slowly, controlling the intake with more caution than usual. “I haven’t adjusted to life away from home.”

“You think you’re the only one?” Scepticism laces the finer nuances in her voice and Rukia is both exasperated and affectionate; not ready to let him off the hook. “There’s a thing called a phone, a thing called friends, and a thing called talking. Now, I’m just paraphrasing my sister when she says it’s good to mix and match two of the three every now and then, but I don’t think there’s any harm in you taking this advice as well.”

His fingers drum on his knee and Toushirou remembers the feeling of trying to make a crown of daisies, stalks rubbery against the pads of his fingertips. His breath evens out. “I don’t owe you anything for that very good advice, do I?” With a wry smirk he asks her and the smug curl at the corner Rukia’s mouth is nothing short of pleased.

“Maybe a muffin or two.”

 

*

 

Karin passes him the marmalade after jumping the leap of faith over a cliff where an orange tree shook its fruit onto the ground and let it roll down the slope. The Hatter liked her idea of racing against falling fruit, and dragged Toushirou with her, without warning and a jolt. What happened was this: first the oranges plummeted, then she threw an extraordinarily large picnic basket to follow suit, then she grabbed onto him and ran onto air before they suddenly began to descend like doomed, sinking stones into a salty ocean where mermaids stare too long and with irises too translucent.

Except the Hatter doesn’t panic, she lets go of him and merely opens her picnic basket and passes him the marmalade. He may flail just a tad.

“Do you prefer bread or toast?” Karin asks a second later, calm as can be. He’s somewhat envious that she can remain so comfortable while they drop to their possible death. Then he remembers, just as she moves and heaves herself upon the picnic basket, heel of her hands flat upon the lid.

Toushirou opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it once more once he adjusts to this strange sensation of tranquillity that settles like a second skin and he relearns how to breathe. “Toast.”

She nods and snaps her fingers. Toast appears on a china blue plate, butter neatly on the side. There’s a knife in the marmalade jar and Toushirou helps himself to eating this midnight snack, gravity keeping everything in place, levitating objects around him, so that they fall at the same pace.

The Hatter sits on her straw woven picnic basket and bumps the heel of her boots against the material, the curve of dress rustling. There’s a self-satisfied glow about her, and it’s an improvement from the last time, but there’s still that echo of loneliness creasing around the edges. Toushirou tries not to stare, and Karin chooses not to comment. Instead she shuffles to one corner of the basket, dragging one leg on top of the other, silver buckles colliding in a pretty mess and lets him sit beside her, hand extending to help him up. She nibbles on a bourbon biscuit and every crumb that breaks turns to miniscule bubbles that soar high above them.

“How long are we going to fall?” He asks her, curious.

“As long as it takes.” Karin replies with a simple shrug and leans back. “We’ll hit rock bottom with a splash.”

He looks down, and through the water-born mist, he can hear the plop of oranges hitting the grey ripples of the lake, lagoon, whatever it is that he hopes catches them and softens the fall. He can’t see the outline of oranges decorating the water, and that is proof enough that he should stop looking below him otherwise he’ll get too dizzy. Toushirou focuses on his pulse point and thinks about counting sheep. Their knees touch as Karin turns to face him.

“Brace yourself.” The Mad Hatter bares her pearly white teeth seconds in a pretty smile before the both of them topple backs into the freezing cold water.

When he wakes up drenched, Toushirou is, perhaps, a little amused to learn that Keigo has flooded the bathroom, Mizuiro murmuring that Afro-san-taichou will not take this as an excuse. He is mostly annoyed. 

 

*

 

The day Rukia decides to try out this online recipe for ‘Butterbeer’ during lunch is the day Toushirou finds her again. Already fifteen minutes late for class, the Teacher’s Assistant struts in as if she didn’t even notice, carefree smile there to impishly shrug away her folly. He blinks, and it’s her. Clear as day, cheerful, fine-featured, and tangible, she scribbles her name on the board and turns back to face them, loose locks of hair swishing past her shoulders. The pen squeaks, but Toushirou doesn’t hear it.

“Sorry I’m late.” Matsumoto Rangiku has the picture of innocence, dimples at the ready. “Won’t happen again.”

“See that it doesn’t.” Professor Ulquiorra Schiffer states despondently, and Matsumoto doesn’t quite meet his eyes as she nods, moving as quickly as she can to find a chair to sit and listen, like the other students. Professor Ulquiorra talks in a monotone drawl for a good portion of the lecture, and with a deliberate pause, glances at the sunny assistant, introduces her and departs, realizing that he does not need to partake in any further action.

Toushirou doesn’t pay attention to class, forgets to write any notes; he’s completely captivated. He watches the way she moves and talks, and laugh with a strange lilt to her voice. She claps her hands and is somewhat lax and informal in her presence to being a teaching assistant, and yet it’s charming. Her method works. He finds himself entranced by her, and yet as he sits riveted, Matsumoto Rangiku is oblivious.

There’s no recognition of knowing him, no moment like the movies where the world stands still and their eyes meet across the room for a fraction of a second while it feels much longer. Instead she sweeps past him with her cloud-grey eyes and chooses someone besides him to answer the question. The difference between reality and fantasy.

She’s different to what he remembered, more curvaceous and buxom than the petite girl he knew in Wonderland. Her confidence is stunning; and she wins the class over with her abundant personality, and it’s not that she’s brand new that he doesn’t recognise her, but. But it’s her less defined traits, the curling of her fingers into the palm of her hand, the infectious laughter she emits, and the core personality quirks that remain very much the same.

Her left hand touches her right hip, her right elbow rests on her left hand, and she hides her lip-glossed mouth behind her curled up fingers as he passes her, chin tilting downwards. She blinks and he frowns, not quite sure if he should move or go, when she’s posed like a model, waiting for something to happen. Bright lights, flashes, the camera dilating the pupils; these are moments in the making, and everyone else is evacuating the classroom, ignorant of the iris photography.

“You’re Hitsugaya Toushirou, right?” Matsumoto is the first to speak. Words forget their syllables, and Toushirou nods, keeping his mouth closed so he doesn’t stand like a gawking idiot. He watches her grin through distant lens. “Nice to meet you.” There’s a crease between her eyebrows, as she extends her hand, and lets her fingers linger as she stares him out, eyes darkening once he lets go, a storm cloud not sure whether to rage or diminish. She knows his name, but can’t recall the time or place, irritation gnawing on her lower lip. “Have we met before?”

“Not that I’m aware.” He shakes his head with a bittersweet smile. He can’t.

“Hmm.” She blows a tangerine strand of hair out of her eyes and looks frustrated before she brightens. “Never mind then. I’ll figure it out. If not, I bet it’s a cosmic past life echo.”

His heart is cradled by a bone birdcage, held too tight to beat too fast, and the result is an ache that beats slowly, slowly into disappointment and transforms his smile into something smaller. He bids her farewell and silently makes the resolution to concentrate better in class. It’s enough, to know that she’s okay. It won’t bind him.

Toushirou wishes that he was fifteen again, and it was more than a simple supernatural attraction that drew them together. Echo is a good word, nostalgia resounding in the corner of his mind with every step he takes away from beautiful Matsumoto Rangiku. Cosmic too; universes apart, shooting stars. She’s fallen from one world into another, irrevocably pushed with kisses and shed her petal skin for the final time, and now that he’s found her, this will have to do.

Did she know? When they shook hands, could she remember for a split second how things used to be? Had she been waiting for him to find her all this time?

Rukia shrieks once the mixture froths in the saucepan, and double-checks the recipe to see how it is supposed to be, breaking Toushirou from his thoughts. Startled by the sudden reaction, she halts midsentence about models and marching bands and lifts the saucepan up in the air, and reassures Toushirou that it’s exactly as it’s supposed to be, she was simply caught unawares because she’d never tried the recipe before. Milk and butter do that when they reach their boiling point. Their kitchen is safe thus far. Toushirou wrinkles his nose and does admit that the caramel does smell tasty.

“As it’s supposed to. Have faith.” Rukia boasts with pride and pours the Butterbeer into a mug for him to drink. “I am an excellent cook.”

Butterbeer is supposed to be a ‘pick-me-up’, and will no doubt take away that grumpy face of his for a little while, Rukia declares as he takes the first sip. Mostly, it burns his tongue.

 

*

 

It must be from the Butterbeer that he gets a butter craving two days later. 

 

*

 

The White Knight stumbles across him by accident.

Toushirou, perhaps warily, recognises him as the local sweetshop owner, mostly by the electric smile and the all-too-delighted expression fixed upon his face. Why he’s dreaming about the sweetshop owner, Toushirou doesn’t know, but there he is, helmet flap opened with his face peering through. He remembers the name on the tag and that Rukia asked if she could have any recipes for a friend, which he then suggested that they could always apply for the job. That was still pending. The new book weighing heavily in both their bags — because they could never share the same book, written by George R.R. Martin or H.P. Lovecraft, was nearly finished and Rukia often crowed when she was in the lead.

The White Knight’s armour clinks and clanks with every step he takes; the bucker and sword are clanging against the painted metal. His helmet doesn’t quite fit him and it bounces on his head as he strides toward Toushirou, bowed ponytail swishing back and forth. Upon closer inspection, the white paint is tarnished against the tin material, scratched away like bitten nails, in need of a new coat. There are cracks where the joints are, and it must be so easy to tear the flakes away with the softest of touches.

“I wondered when I’d meet you.” The Knight Ukitake Juushirou says with a curiously amused half-smile. He pulls the branches of the apricot tree besides them like a lever. Toushirou waits and nothing happens. He adds, in a gentle voice that he hears granny uses only in the most disappointing of moments, “You missed the wedding.”

Toushirou is spared from answering as the tree transforms before his eyes. The outstretched limbs, the boughs bearing fruit clam shut like a paper fan and the branches unite like a clumpy telescope frame, sticking out at odd angles before everything unfolds like a three-dimensional picture book, and the apricot tree rises and turns into a hot air balloon, expanding and maintaining its apricot shape. The basket case opens its door like a welcome matt, anyone can step in. The White Knight pushes him onboard, gloved hand feather light against his shoulder blades, and interprets his lack of answer as guilt.

“She understands, of course.” The Knight says soothingly, quick to add in order to reassure him. “She’ll throw a second wedding if it pleases her, and you attend. She has a kind heart, the Queen.” Not the Queen-To-Be, Toushirou notes silently, and thinks of rowing boats and summer solstices. “And she’s saved you some cake.”

The White Knight rubs his buckler and dismantles the shield from his arm. He turns it upside down. There is a cake, waiting in the centre, fresh and pristine as if it was made this very day and cut only seconds ago.

“Here you are.” The Knight smiles brightly at him as they begin to rise from the ground. “As some like to say, dig in.”

“How was it?” Toushirou asks him quietly. They’re high enough to see the entire chess piece forest below. Something prowls under the ivy castle tree. The cake tastes of Tabasco sauce and something he’s never tried before. Another bite and he can taste blueberries and raspberries. “How are they?”

“Happy.” The White Knight replies simply.

The Knight gives him a goofy grin and proceeds to surprise Toushirou with details of marshmallow fountains and rhapsody ladybugs; and strawberry lace giggling into knots with the rambunctious aftermath of the twittering, tipsy owl. The sylphs danced with the ondines, and the morgens promised not to drown anyone; Isane singing softly both fey and English with her sister.

By the end of it, Toushirou isn’t sure if he’s meant to be left wistful, hungry, or both.

 

*

 

Rukia informs Toushirou that they’ve been chosen as models for a friend’s coursework over breakfast. Or rather, Rukia volunteered and later had made a marvellous idea that she should drag Toushirou with her. At least she waited until it was the winter holidays to let him know, she tells him, although she did tell him earlier. It doesn’t serve to remove the slight frown on his face as she hoped. Hastily, she moves on. Apparently, it’s a friend at the marching band whose sister needed people ‘about their height’. Neither of them are returning to their hometown just yet, waiting for snow to fall first unless their faith disappears.

“She plays the glockenspiel.” Rukia states as if it explains everything and she’s finally found an equal for her tambourine-playing skills. “C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

The difference between an English Major and a Drama Major is that ‘dressing up’ is not entirely fun for everyone.

“We’ll see.” Toushirou stabs his cereal and unceremoniously gets his hands wet. He’s too distracted by learning that glockenspiels are even allowed in marching bands to say no. Rukia fills him in about the details.

Kurosaki Yuzu is not what he expected when agreed to the steam punk modelling project, not as the photographer or the designer; yet there’s something brilliantly disarming about her as she welcomes them to her apartment and suggests where they should initially stand so she gets a feel for them. Honeyed gold hair and warm amber eyes, both disappear under the dazzling flash of a shuttered camera lens. There’s something familiar about her apple cheeks, but her fingers snap another photo and her feminine face graces a lovely smile, and whatever semblance of a thought Toushirou had vanishes under bright lights and candid poses.

Measuring tapes appear from nowhere, or rather, Toushirou corrects himself, everywhere. Kurosaki Yuzu seems to have assembled an assortment of measuring tapes around her neck and her waist, her left ankle and her right hand wrist into an eccentric uniform.

“My sister would be here,” Yuzu explains when asked about their missing fourth member, tilting her head to the side thoughtfully. “But I have her measurements, in any case.”

“Where is she?” Rukia asks with a wry grin, gazing sideways at the camera, shoulders slanted. Another photo is taken. “Not suffering another hangover, surely.”

“She promises never to do so again.” Yuzu recites with a hopeless sigh and an amused shake of the head.

Rukia snorts. “Typical.”

 

*

 

“Very typical, the lazy git.” The Mad Hatter says, half-laughing, half-sighing, hands playing with the creases on the lace of her red dress. Gone is the girl with melancholy and loneliness; here stands a girl who is happy, subtly hidden under her mockery. With critical eyes, she looks pointedly at a large rock. “I mean look at him! See what he’s become.”

She gestures to what seems to be a very large and hairy cushion. Toushirou blinks; realizes that the place they stand is familiar because he’s been here before long ago. He rolled off the orange cushion and slid onto the grass and dreamed of the Wonderland counterpart of Matsumoto for the last time here. Kissed her and never said goodbye. Now he never really says hello.

Here they find the Dormouse.

Slumbering and snoring, covered in so much hair, with rose flushed laughter, the Hatter assures him that it’s the Dormouse, her brother, alright. Nobody else is like this. She lifts her purple-and-black striped legs up, and when her hand reaches her ankle, scissors materialize. Karin tosses him them even though she shouldn’t, and then turns to rummage through her huge picnic basket. Plates, broken and broken, clatter all around her as she throws them up in to the air and Toushirou is too slow to catch them.

“It was the rainbow tarts, I bet.” Affection rings clearly in her voice as she finds what she’s looking for. She closes the lid, and in her hand is a tea pot, china white and hand-painted with stylized flowers, strawberries and ribbons. “The Snap-dragonflies do like to give him treats like that. He keeps forgetting that it’s the quickest way to fall asleep. Can’t say I blame him.”

They walk around the giant cushion — the Dormouse covered in overgrown hair — and Toushirou cannot tell where the head is, or how his limbs are entangled in that mane of unruly hair. He supposes that is what the scissors are for, but doesn’t act upon his suspicions and snip away random locks of hair to see what sort of person is underneath. Instead, he waits, and listens to the way the Dormouse breathes.

At last the Hatter stops and smirks, and murmurs “got it” under her breath and angles her top hat to the side. The sun warms their backs. Karin smiles psychotically, raises the tea pot and shatters it against the muss of hair, and bursts into a fit of giggles. The tea pot shatters upon contact, just another piece of broken clay.

Toushirou hears a very muffled “ow” and Karin finds another pair of scissors hidden in the sole of her boots. Together they hack away the long locks of hair until a lanky boy with mousy whiskers and mousy ears and a frown that could very easily be an upside down Cheshire Cat’s grin stares at them. The Dormouse’s orange hair is still fairly long, and if he squints and stands far away, could probably be mistaken for a girl, but close up, his face is visible and very much a grouchy boy who has just been unpleasantly woken from his nap.

Before Karin throws her arms around him that is, and his frown disappears, both of them colliding into the ground. The Dormouse’s whiskers twitch, and limber arms wrap themselves around the Hatter’s frame.

“Well, jeez, don’t hit me so hard next time!” The Dormouse grouches while pulling out shards of china white tea pots out of his head. “I’m bleeding here.”

“Don’t disappear on me and I won’t hit you at all, Ichi-nii.” Chuckling, Karin blinks rapidly, standing up and then surveys the damage she’s done. “Eh, you look alright to me.”

“Of course you’d say that. You’re not the one with the splitting headache, are you?”

“You’re not the one who’s been looking everywhere for you.” Karin counters immediately, and can’t help herself from grinning fondly at him when the Dormouse yawns. “Must have been some rainbow tart.”

“I’ve had better.” The Dormouse shrugs and stretches his limbs, not quite ready to stand up.

“Do you want to go see Kiyone?” Karin asks, gazing at him through her eyelashes. Her voice is quiet, and she sounds so young.

“No, I’m alright.” The Dormouse shrugs, taking the role of an aloof older brother that Karin instantly finds amusing; smirking in disbelief.

The Mad Hatter dunks her top hat on the Dormouse’s head, and changes the colour to a midnight black. Sprightly, she jumps to her feet, tattered red dress twirling around her knees and boots, and practically dances a strange sort of sea-shanty jig to stand besides Toushirou, among the fallen tresses that could easily be an orange ocean being taken hostage by the wind. Radiant and jubilant, she laughs with happiness, and says, “Ichigo, meet Toushirou. Toushirou, meet my brother.”

 

*

 

“Catwings.” Rukia holds the book up in her hands with a gleeful grin. She looks like a model, advertising the book that everyone should buy. “How cute is that!”

Toushirou holds up his phone and takes a photo. “And… pose.”

When he sends the photo to Momo, he doesn’t really expected to be texted back many hearts in return. But knowing that it’s on her to-read list makes him smile.

 

*

 

“So, you’re Sir Toushirou.” The Dormouse blinks coolly, and flicks his gaze back to his sister, perched on a tree, who merely smirks. His hair is shorter than last night, just as orange as Toushirou remembers, but disastrously choppy and uneven. The Dormouse doesn’t seem to care. He sits, relaxing under the filtered sunlight tree, legs outstretched. “You stole my sister’s hat.”

Her smirk vanishes and is replaced with a bright blush. “Ichi-nii!”

Toushirou breathes in the scent of peppermint, can feel it settle on his skin. He is not afraid and calmly informs the Dormouse. “She gave it to me.”

“A likely story.” Ichigo rolls his eyes and points, fingers snapping. “She mourned for five years.”

“Ichi-nii!” Karin is mortified, voice higher than usual. Her hand rests protectively over her top hat, a dark burgundy hue with a soft yellow band; or perhaps she is trying to shield the red dappled heat across her cheeks. It’s a stark difference from the lonely girl from before, the girl trying to piece herself together with the melody of a wheezing kettle piano. “You — just — shut up.” She finishes lamely, losing. “Yes, just shut up.”

“Other people,” Ichigo starts a different conversation, ignoring his sister, “were waiting for you for completely different reasons.”

“A hat is a valid reason, no less important than others.” Karin scowls.

“And, perhaps, if they cared, they would have given you a better welcome.” The orange haired older brother shrugs, obviously not who cared. “Apparently you didn’t get much of a fanfare.”

Toushirou thinks of the shape shifter that used to be a butterfly, the White King and Queen on their rowing boat, a picnic underneath the stars, an unbirthday party, and prefers that quiet hospitality to meaningless celebration. “It was enough.” He remembers the sensation of bluebells pushing him upwards; a kingdom far away, on the outskirts of the main city, so he’s been told. “Do you know why I’m here?”

“Not a clue.” The Dormouse is nonchalant about it, and closes his eyes. They flicker open half a minute later, an in a drawling voice, asks, “Well, what do you think? What do you want to do here? Do you want to be a king, a saviour, or something else?”

Toushirou lifts a shoulder, drops it, unsure what to say. Neither option appeals to him. The Hatter watches him with deliberation, striped knee socks swinging back and forth. She still reminds him of a gothic Cinderella, compared to the scruffy and abominably taller older brother, whiskers twitching when he frowns particularly deeply. He sighs. “Something else, I guess.”

“In that case,” Karin muses as she deftly leaps onto the ground, tummy pressed against the pliant grass before she rolls over to face the cloud streaked sky, and her dark eyes search for his, “why don’t we aim for a little bit of mischief?” There’s the beginning of a grin just about to spread telling in her voice.

The Dormouse lifts an eyebrow.

“Karin.”

“It’s simply a suggestion. Who knows? It might be what he needed, after all.” The Hatter rolls over once more, dismissive of grass stains and pulled down stripy socks. Her hands cup her face, and not enough tussled hair that slips through her fingers hides her cheeky grin. In fact, when Toushirou glances her way, her grin only widens; eyes glittering in delight.

“Well.” Ichigo tries to sound reasonable, and not intrigued, “what did you have in mind?”

 

*

 

Toushirou meets Kurosaki Karin on a Friday, the week before he’s meant to go home with Rukia and celebrate Christmas with Momo. It’s the first day of the photo shoot, and Yuzu’s sister had been mysteriously absent with all of the fitting because she tended to be distracting. It would not to unreasonable to guess that it is Yuzu that is the March Hare, knowing now the relation to Kurosaki Karin.

But here, in the steam punk painted backgrounds — the tall buildings and nebulous clouds, the azure sky and the mountains seen from vaguely afar — a dark haired girl sits at a piano stool and plays a jaunty tune, hands skittering up and down the black and white keys like a mad scientist left to play with shiny new toys. All that’s needed is the cackle, which is replaced by her crazed grin when she faces them, head lifting to their direction when she hears the door open.

Already dressed in her steam punk attire, a netted veil attached to a coachman hat and goggles, and a black dress, elaborate corset and rippling folds for her long skirt; the Mad Hatter welcomes them with a lopsided smile. She’s beautiful, she’s svelte, she’s a stranger that he’s never met before today. She’s wearing buckles on her high heeled boots, where her ankles should be. She’s grinning like a mad woman who’s comfortable in a world that’s never been.

“I thought you only played the glockenspiel, Karin.” Rukia says, mouth compressed in order to hide her smile, in order to maintain her seriousness. “What else aren’t you telling me?”

Karin smirks impishly. “A little bit of this and a little bit of that.” Her shoes clack against the wooden floorboards, and idly she plays with the cuff off her stripy black and white arm warmers, focusing her attention on that. “But mostly that Yuzu is going to throw a fit if you two don’t get changed.”

“I am not.” The door shuts behind Yuzu.

“Teasing.”

Karin fixes Rukia’s hair with a hairbrush and feathers, Yuzu applies eyeliner, just enough to accentuate the waifish feeling that Rukia carries about her when she reads a book late in the night, giggles, and tries to imitate the accents. Yuzu puts a little eyeliner on him too, which is surprising, but when Toushirou glances at his reflection it’s barely noticeable. He resists the urge to straighten his clothes, because apparently he’s meant to look debauched. He draws the line at ruffling his hair, and Yuzu respects that.

He wears his goggles around his neck, instead of a bowtie, cushioned by a neckerchief, brass clockwork cogs ornate against the crimson. He rolls his shoulder carefully, watching the way he causes creases with the white fabric, the black arm choker placed just above his elbow. Unable to help it, he smoothes out his velvet waistcoat and digs his hands into his pockets. It’ll impede him for now.

“I look like an old man.” Toushirou comments to himself.

“But an awesome old man.” Karin sidles up to him and glances at herself, cocking her hip out before laughing and adopting a more comfortable position to stand in and converse. “If at that age, you’re wearing my sister’s clothes, you will definitely be an awesome old man.” She claps her hands and changes her pose, her eyelashes filtering through the net as she looks at him directly.

“All I need now is a pipe.”

She grins.

“I should have introduced you two earlier,” Rukia laughs, twirling about in her ninja-sky pirate attire, as she likes to call it. Donning a midnight purple knee-length skirt, black tights and a crème coloured blouse, Rukia twirls about again, slanting opera glasses in her hand over her face. “But you never came to marching band practice. Anyway, Toushirou, you are an old man. You grumble all the time.”

“Only because you’re bossy.” Toushirou sniffs.

“I’m bossy because you grumble.” She stamps her steeple boot and folds her gloved hands over her chest.

“That’s not it. You just like being bossy, Rukia.” Karin snickers, and saunters towards the limelight. “You boss me about all the time.”

Rukia is unimpressed with that argument. “And that’s because you mess about all the time.”

“Guys.” Yuzu patiently reminds them that they’re on a job with a gentle firmness. “You can talk as much as you like, but please do so where the scenery is.”

There’s something charmingly tranquil about the entire afternoon they spend at the photo shoot, Yuzu ordering them about like windup puppets only minimally. At some point, all three clash keys at the piano, and simply smile at each other, because it was pure nonsense and photos are still being frames, unable to capture sound. Karin is affable, and like the Mad Hatter has done, she quips at him like he knows something she doesn’t and she knows something he doesn’t, and easily they fall into a bantering pattern, Rukia all too happy to join in while Yuzu laughs at their state of silliness and make-believe and keeps the photos rolling. Another time, Rukia pours a glass of wine, and Toushirou dryly asks if this is Chianti while holding the glass between his fingers and the heel of his hand. Its pomegranate juice, very good for the soul. Yuzu plucks a red rose from the bouquet her avid green fingered courting-not-quite-boyfriend gave her and tells them to improvise.

There are photos of Karin, of Rukia, of Toushirou, of all variations therein, some in altered poses, some taken a split second too late and too early, some too posed for bright beams and camera flashes, and by the end of it, all four of them have stolen each other’s hats and Toushirou’s hidden monocle.

 

*

 

Toushirou catches Matsumoto-sensei looking at him sometimes, like there’s something she wants to say, before and after class. There’s something on the tip of her tongue, angled by the crick in her neck, and there, transfixed, it remains. It’s a look that he caught Karin share, confused but probing, and unable to pinpoint the reason why. But Karin shrugs it off and mutters that she probably saw him around the campus, though there’s a slither of uncertainty lingering her tone.

He doesn’t tell them about Wonderful, lazy summer dreams where winter has never arrived, but autumn occasionally has, and spring is but a memory, doesn’t tell them that she used to be a shape-shifter, is a Mad Hatter, might be a March Hare; tracing Shakespearean words and trying to make sense of them. The tips of his fingers underline the words I did love you once, and understands that all too well. He wishes that he loved her still, loved her more, maybe. But he knows that she’s in love with a silver haired man who could easily be a Cheshire Cat should he turn up in Wonderland.

They banter and tango around each other, each repertoire a pantomime and mockery and the other students often question the love life of their playful TA. Some adore it, some don’t understand it, Toushirou for his part makes it none of his business.

In class, whenever her silver-haired boyfriend appear, their relationship is full of theatrics, but outside, from what little Toushirou has glimpsed of it, there’s a softer side, quietly intimate. She curves a smile against her boyfriend’s fingertips before she kisses him goodbye, and his gaze never strays from hers when she walks away, while Toushirou fixes the scarf around his neck and gets into the car with the Kuchikis.

“Merry Christmas folks,” Hisana says with an all encompassing hug, and translates that very subtle acknowledging nod that is Byakuya’s version of celebrating the holiday. Plus matching scarves.

There are too many lines between them now, and Toushirou has no desire to take Matsumoto Rangiku’s happiness away. 

 

*

 

Toushirou’s never really been one for celebrating his own birthday. It’s not that he dislikes birthdays, most of the time he can’t see the point, especially since his is so close to Christmas. Most people are lazy and only give him one present — but Momo and Rukia are different, breaking that convention and give him two, because that’s what friends are for, they say. Friends, not cheapskates. They throw him a party where they try and marathon everything: Harry Potter, Studio Gibli movies, Lord of the Rings, and whatever movie they pick off their shelves that will be good fun, even though there’s a guaranteed certainty that the movies chosen will either break the twenty-four hour limit, or will be chosen for select scenes instead of being watched from beginning to end.

Well, so long as there’s cake.

… and a birthday hat that is obviously stolen from a Christmas cracker.

He feels so old.

Karin and Yuzu call him, talking together through speakerphone, slightly miffed that they had to learn though Rukia that his birthday was today, before wishing him all their best, and promising him a New Years Present since they’re clearly not allowed to give him a birthday present and are much offended. The thought makes him smile, picturing the odd ball twins with puffed out cheeks and mock-anger. Next time, Karin swears, he isn’t going to be so lucky. Cheerfully, perhaps overtly cheerful, he tells them that he’s looking forward to it.

Mainly the watermelon cake.

 

*

 

The pictures arrive on Christmas day, Yuzu’s gift to them as a thank you for all the hard work, and also as a Christmas present. Momo coos and loves them instantly, sighing with envy at the beautiful designs, the filtered light and their facial expressions. Rukia makes herself a jelly sandwich and smiles. She kept the gloves she adored wearing. Sadly, she can’t use them for the great unknown, the garden speckled by a snowy kiss, lest she wants a karmic punishment and have her fingers frostbitten.

It doesn’t stop them from having a snow fight, Momo’s friends from university joining them to visit. Renji is clearly a cheater, which Rukia calls bullshit on and enacts divine retribution: a piggyback ride with watery snow dunked down his collar. It balances out with a roll on the snow. Izuru is more adept at building forts, preferably made from blankets and pillows, but trees and bushes and hidden behind cars are certainly an impressive feat. The tag-teams go as such, first boys against girls, then Izuru-and-Momo and Toushirou-and-Rukia with Renji playing double agent and being won over with countless bribes, before finally transitioning into Izuru-and-Rukia and Momo-and-Renji and Toushirou as the referee and constantly being attacked for no reason other than dumb fucking foul play.

“All of you,” Hisana says afterwards, endlessly amused and infinitely wiser with her use of common sense, “need a cup of hot chocolate, or whatever your poison of choice is, and to sit by the fireplace.”

Toushirou doesn’t really know Byakuya that well, though he’d like to believe that he can understand him fairly coherently in between his disparaging mysterious self, is probably thinking ‘what the hell are these people doing in my house?’

Toushirou sneezes and feels Byakuya’s icy glare.

 

*

 

“Happy New Year.” Toushirou says to the girl in neon red, standing above him arms akimbo. He’d considered sleeping before he heard the dirt crushed beneath the soles of her shoes, reverberating loudly with every step that she took. But he doesn’t move from where he is, reclining lazily and basking in warmth.

It’s too sunny in Wonderland these days.

“What?” Her face is overshadowed by loose locks of hair. “Never mind, up you go.” She shakes her head and lends a hand, grip strong and steady. “What are you doing outside Red Kingdom? The castle walls, even.” She arches an eyebrow and there’s a look of recognition that passes over her face as he introduces himself. “Fucking Kurosakis. I should have known.”

Her name is Tatsuki.

“Ichigo kept nattering about this. Should have fucking known.” Tatsuki bares her teeth into a smirk, and ruffles the back of her hair. Her hands touch the stone walls, and slabs of stone push through, serving as stair steps for them to take to climb the walls. “And now I’ve found you, they’ll be here any minute.”

It’s not as if Toushirou can choose where he turns up, or control anything like night or day, or the seasons that come and go. Wonderland would look pretty in snow, if it ever gave winter a chance.

When they descend from the other side of the wall, and Tatsuki has scooped her black lion’s mane into a tufty ponytail that hangs over one shoulder, hiding one ear and revealing the other, Ichigo and Karin are waiting for him below, grinning like jack-and-jill-in-a-box, parasols close at hand and tapping their shoulders. Tatsuki pulls at Ichigo’s whiskers and seems reasonably pleased when his cheeks redden and he tells her to cut it out, ouch. She stops, but her wrists are held in his hands, fingers spread apart like a surrender. Ichigo doesn’t let go.

“Mischief, you say.” Her dark eyes glare into Ichigo’s, and Ichigo doesn’t look away. Instead, he quirks a grin, although it must hurt because his smile is strained; and waggles his eyebrows.

“And mischief you’ll get.” The tall boy leans in closer and tugs her bobbled hair free, murmuring, “I like you better like this.”

Karin rolls her eyes. “C’mon, let’s see how the dear Red Queen is.” She loops her arm through his and explains, ignoring the older brother incongruous incredulity, “If you’re not playing croquet, and one is walking with company, apparently we are meant to walk as such.” They wander in no particular direction, entering the garden and aimlessly following the maze from there, sides bumping occasionally; though neither pay much attention to it. Karin wiggles free soon enough, precisely the exact moment she realizes there are no spectators — it is an uncomfortable manner to walk. “I’d rather defy convention anyhow. Let them look and gasp, my name has been blackened enough.” She grins impishly and explains no further, ducking into a yellow rosebush when she hears footsteps, and silently gets him to join her. A thorn scratches his cheekbone, and Karin sighs, licks her thumb and rubs it away. The pads of her fingers are cold.

“It’ll have to do.” Dispassionate, she says, still looking at him critically, before progressing further into the rosebush, treading lightly on the soft grass.

“Why are we hiding?” Toushirou asks.

“The Queen.” Karin answers and stills, realizing that the ribbon that encircles her waist has been caught by the rose thorns, if she moves the material might tear. Toushirou comes to her aid and disentangles her from her prison; taking extra care to not break the tangled embrace of flowers and leaves when separating the pretty material from the green vines. “If she catches sight of me, I daresay that even the King won’t have mercy.”

He turns to look at her. “What happened?”

“A terrible concert piece. Queen Soi Fon decided that there wasn’t enough sugar cubes in the teacup.” Sighing, quite disappointed with the outcome, Karin doesn’t acknowledge that the euphemism didn’t explain anything. “King Byakuya decided that it wasn’t worth adding more. And thus they banished me. So now I’m defying convention.” She grins a little sheepishly, and gestures all around them. “And covertly doing mischief.”

Peeking through the rosebush, Toushirou sees people he recognises from before: the White King and White Queen playing with awkward smiles and delighted laughter, turquoise flamingos cautiously being petted, Tweedledee and Tweedledum who he still has no idea which is which squabbling with hedgehogs, Byakuya adorned with a crown and a short woman beside him, matched both by crimson and crown. Queen Soi Fon, he presumes. She’s fine-featured and petite, and illuminates a sternness that almost seems aesthetically suiting to Byakuya, had Toushirou perceived Byakuya to be a cold man. Except, as the scene unfolds, and the Red Queen bickers with the Duchess, the Red King turns to gaze upon the two sisters, sighing and looking most disinterested. A cat’s head looms overhead, fur flaxen and crooning pretty words that makes the Red Queen bluster more and demand that its fur should turn black. The Duchess merely smirks. The Cheshire Cat’s grin widens and cheerfully threatens to swallow her whole.

“Come on,” the Mad Hatter insists, and touches his arm. “This way.”

Hidden in the bed of roses and between the castle wall lies a door, a buried secret entrance that leads to a basement and corridors extinguished of light. Karin talks to him in a low voice, coaxing him to reply, and quietens when she hears voices that are not their own. She presses her ear against the exit — found out by a sudden thud and an audible ow — and Toushirou tries to make sense of the silhouette and the dimmed light, and hears her hesitantly confirm that the coast is clear. They step out of the picture, pushed away like swinging a door wide open, and flawlessly step into the Red Castle.

“Where are we going?” Toushirou inquires as he looks left and right, like crossing the road, except he doesn’t know what he’s looking for. People, he supposes, logically. But whether to run away from them, or towards him, is where he remains unsure. There are statues of painted red tin knights in between the portraits, landscapes and absurd, and Toushirou stands in the middle of two statues that stare at each other through their masked helmets.

Karin shrugs. Her top hat has shrunk, changed colour to soft cerise, and its part of a hair band now, hanging on lopsidedly. “Wherever you want to go. You choose.”

Curiosity gets the better of him, and they end up in a courtroom comprised of paper. It has balconies built up by a pack of cards, and Karin and Toushirou have a booth for themselves that looms over the courtroom. Below, the Red Queen sits, cold eyes piercing at the subject in question. That would be — Toushirou freezes involuntarily as the recognition strikes, breath hitching — that would be the gardener, from very long ago.

“Karin.” Toushirou hisses, and does not dare move as something prickles across his skin, crawling lethargically but with meaning. “Karin.”

“Mm?” She turns and blinks, head propped on her hands, mouth slightly parted. “Oh, hello.”

“Hello.”

“Karin.” Toushirou says, as calm as he can muster; desperation seeping through as his nails dig deeper into his skin. “Get it off.”

“Sure thing.” He watches her bite the corner of her mouth, trying to suppress a smile while she coos to the creature that crawls down his neck onto his shoulder into the palm of her hands. “Meet the Caterpillar.” Karin smiles and sets the Caterpillar on the balcony.

“Wrong target, I’m afraid.” The Caterpillar bows his head, antennas bouncing up and down. He must have crawled onboard during the rosebush and stayed there until he knew it was time to move and freak his ‘helper’ out. “I was aiming for the lady, you see. I missed.”

“I noticed.” Toushirou glares. He can still feel the ghost of the Caterpillar’s many feet skittering on his skin.

“What happened to Nanao?” The Mad Hatter asks airily, resuming her original position and peering below. The words are too quiet to be heard, and the gardener is stuttering; the mumble the only audible noise. “Or was it Lisa? I forget.”

“Competing for my affections while I take a momentary break.” The Caterpillar proudly declares with a dreamy gaze. “My beautiful Lisa-chan and sweet Nanao-chan have come so far. Butterflies love the chase.”

“Really.” Toushirou’s never been fond of insects. Mostly he tries to ignore them. Or trap them in glasses because the alternative is worse. He can never muster up enough willpower to stop Mizuiro to calmly and mechanically dispose of them, mostly because in moments like those, there’s an eerily detached smile just playing on his lips.

“Oh yes.” The Caterpillar peers down, and pauses. “That fellow seems familiar for some reason.”

And the gardener looks up. Eyes meet. His face pales into white.

“That’s the cabbage thief!”

“Excellent!” Karin cheers, and vaults off the balcony, causing the podium to crumble beneath her. “That’s our cue!”

Toushirou forgets to jump. The podium comprised of cards beautifully placed together, arched towards each together to keep the booth balanced, is now in chaos, destroyed and Toushirou is falling in slow motion. The Caterpillar has traitorously turned into a butterfly, and Karin is busy doing backflips to notice. Mischief. Mayhem. It’s all the same to her, things that start with M. Is it possible to be crushed to death by cards?

Afar, through addled ears and dizzy surroundings, Toushirou hears Karin speak. “Queen Soi Fon! King Byakuya! Hello!”

The Dormouse pulls him out from the wreckage, and deadpans, “I think we better run now.” Ichigo doesn’t let go of his collar, and drags Karin in tow, singing off-key all the way.

Tatsuki brought raspberry pie, and for an exploding bomb, it is very delicious.


	4. come the morning

Rukia and Renji take a liking to each other. It’s not that it was particularly subtle before New Year’s Day, what with the telltale signs of Renji not-so-covertly glancing at her whenever he thinks she’s not looking, or staring at her too long that both of them end up blushing. Rukia tended to roll her eyes at him and yet be affectionate in a way she hasn’t been before, at least not that Toushirou recognises — and of course with the constant rematches of snow-fights and Rukia taking advantage of this temporary stunning effect she has on him; although the one time he feigns dead was absolutely something anyone would fall for. Anyone. After New Year’s Day, something’s happened, and Rukia and Renji are closer than ever. Not quite girlfriend and boyfriend, Rukia admits with a rising pink flush spreading over her cheeks but with a merry smile, but getting there. Definitely getting there.

“Go for it.” Momo encourages Rukia, stretching her limbs. As the sadly designated ‘shrimps’ of the neighbourhood, all three are determined to be speedy shrimps.

“Three.” Toushirou begins countdown.

“Really?” Rukia pulls her hat over her ears. It makes her look like a pixie.

“Two.”

“Yeah, you two would be cute together.”

“One.”

“Go!” All three chime in simultaneously, and they’re off.

The path they take is suicidal and difficult, paved with ice and skittering slides of cheating, tummy diving when the ending is in sight, not quite fulfilling enough momentum to push them to finish line and when they touch the tree, crawling on their hands and knees, Momo diffuses into giggles, Rukia and Toushirou quick to follow. Ice skating has its merits.

They exchange phone numbers. And their first kiss — tentatively, Renji places his hands on her waist, Rukia’s fingers toy with the red curls at the nape of his neck, she stands on her tiptoes, he dips his head, and together they kiss. Toushirou would rather watch the television, but Momo is passing him the popcorn, and they are making out in plain sight. Toushirou actually does watch the documentary. Momo audibly swoons at the romanticism of it all.

Definitely boyfriend and girlfriend then.

He needs more male friends; Toushirou revisits his reoccurring thoughts once more. The problem is that he finds it’s hard to find a solution when something so easy is in fact a great deal more complicated than originally thought.

“I really like him.” Rukia blushes prettily, and Toushirou helps her load her bags into the car. Byakuya should be doing this. And Hisana should be listening instead. “I’m not making a mistake, am I?”

He shuts the boot. Everything is packed and they’re ready to go back. Toushirou and Rukia go one way and Renji and Momo and Izuru go another. He looks at her, and Toushirou wonders why she needs his blessing at all. “Are you?”

“You and Momo—”

“That was Momo and I. This is you and Renji.” Toushirou states, crossing his arms over his chest. They’re two separate things, and four very different people, as far as Toushirou can see. Like the Red Monarchy and the White Monarchy and their croquet matches with awkward flamingos and prickly hedgehogs. “If that’s what you think is best, then, like Momo said: go for it. Do what you want.”

“Okay.” Rukia grins, and makes her decision. There’s a bounce in her step. “Thanks.”

“Next time, put your own luggage in the car?”

“I thought you were just being a gentleman.” Rukia smiles mischievously and Toushirou should’ve known. He rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling, if only to humour her. “Or, y’know, my best friend.”

“The two aren’t exactly mutually exclusive,” Momo says with fondness, and her shoulders shake with silent laughter. Toushirou looks down at his feet and says nothing. “After all, he’s my best friend too.” And with that in mind, she ruffles his hair. This is what it must be like to have siblings, Toushirou thinks and then scowls, and hates his friends for teasing at how adorable he is. How they all fawned over his new haircut and made grabby hands and actually pulled his tousled mop of hair without asking permission. “Bye, Shirou-chan.”

Rukia texts Renji nonstop on the journey and Toushirou is content to listen to music.

 

*

 

The first thing he hears as the door opens is laughter. Then he sees the outline of Yuzu, turned away from him as she sits on the arm of the sofa, conversational with Mizuiro’s polite smile and whimsy, then Keigo snapping his fingers and drumming a beat on his knees, creating a rhythm that no one, not even himself can match, and the sound of a glockenspiel tapping away a tune that falls out of sync with the drums, and finally Karin comes into view, kneeling on the carpet floor, legs bent at an awkward angle.

“Aha, they’re back!” Keigo cries in dramatic fashion, hands in the air, the lone Mexican wave that everyone pointedly ignores but grins at the brave effort nonetheless.

“Happy New Years Present!” Yuzu hands Toushirou his gift, as promised on the phone, tied neatly in bows and wrapping paper.

“You can open it now if you want.” Karin strides towards them, lopsided smile playing on her face.

He sets the present on the table and carefully makes sure that the paper remains intact, he hears Yuzu hum approvingly, and Rukia stating that he does this every time.

“Like it?” Karin asks as he holds the mixed CD and moonshine bracelet in his hands.

“Yeah.” He says and the twins beam, like red fireflies resting on lily pads that float on a midnight river.

That night he falls asleep to the eclectic music and feels the shadow lions roar to the serrated desert, watching the sand particles tremble but not disintegrate into dust.

 

*

 

Beyond the white kingdom by the sea, there is a hidden cove, sand warm, soft and white that leads away from the swirling shores into a tunnel of darkness. Toushirou hears murmurings, above the white horses and rocking-horseflies, the tapping of rocks and a duet being hummed. Curiosity propels him forward into the hollow cave, and the humming turns to singing, low crooning and an unpractised tenor. Fire burns under a cauldron, where the Mock Turtle sits, and a Gryphon leans against the wall, stone wings tucked neatly behind his shoulders, close to his neck. They give him candid smiles, and as Toushirou steps closer, the light brightens and the sound of the sea fades away.

“Sir Toushirou.” The Mock Turtle begins at once, needing no introduction; he knows his name already. He blinks in befuddled manner, eyes large behind his spectacles, widening when he remembers courtesies. He’s like an owl, slightly absentminded, but gentlemanlike. “Please, sit.”

Toushirou sits.

“Tell him a story.” The Gryphon with a mop of briar black hair suggests. He yawns and crosses his arms across his chest, glancing behind him, where the darkness obscures the path and the pulling twitch of a grimace. “Or ask a question.”

“Which would you prefer?” The elderly Mock Turtle asks kindly, gazing at Toushirou patiently. The lines of his face are soft, formed by gentle smiles.

“Why am I here?” Toushirou asks. The question no longer holds as much weight as it used to, but it is still one that needs to be asked.

His mouth compresses into a thin line, considering, and eventually the Mock Turtle sighs, brows furrowing deeply. “I’m sorry. Nobody knows that but you.”

Toushirou sucks air into his lungs and pretends not to feel disappointed. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t expecting that.

“Tell him about your grandson, Souken.” The Gryphon decides, arching a bushy eyebrow; brash like an unpolished medal just waiting to be cleaned and changes the subject just as subtly. His hands ruffle his hair, and the talons gleam under the fire crackle, stone feathers crinkling when the fine vanes brush one another unwillingly. Mildly bored, the Gryphon asks, “How’s he’s doing these days?”

The cauldron bubbles and the Mock Turtle shuffles across to the edge, letting steam escape. The vapour shows images, blurred at first, before smoothing out like paint drying on watercolour, and Toushirou can see where the White King and White Queen paint the roses pink in their garden, white failing to overpower the red, blue changing the red to purple, wispy, willowy translucent figures shimmering under the reflective light. The bubble expands, and at one point, Toushirou is certain the White Queen waves at them, behind the White King’s back, turned away from them unknowingly. There are stains on her fingertips and the tip of his nose, and the Mock Turtle is gazing at them with all the pride a grandfather can have.

The bubble bursts, but not before the image transfers to the damp walls, and Toushirou glances at the Mock Turtle momentarily before returning to the moving picture. Orihime is smiling and tugging on Uryuu’s shirt, handprints laid bare for all to see, though neither monarch seems to notice, goofy grins catching like an infection.

“They look happy.” Toushirou notes wistfully, and listens to tales told by a Mock Turtle.

 

*

 

The drum major turns out to be the Gryphon, bellowing his orders out and flapping his arms like they’re petty replacements for the wings and therefore must flap with great effort and unintentional comical effect. Except for the times that he gawks, stops and points his finger at some beleaguered instrumentalist, who curses under their breath — instantly losing the cool composure he had held when he was silent and seemingly serious. Karin glares often, and Rukia rolls her eyes. Yuzu laughs and watches them, sitting beside Toushirou where the spectators sit, snapping her camera around whenever the mood suits her, and there’s something particularly funny to see, for further elaboration to be told by a drama queen and her maid-in-waiting. But when the music starts going, and the marching band starts marching, Yuzu films the action to capture those moments, and tries to tell Toushirou to eat quietly when he sits next to her on the band stands. At least for a little while. This is the reason she’s part of the university’s magazine, apparently.

“Fucking Kurumadani.” Karin grumbles, crushing blades of grass against her shoes, voice audible as she walks with Rukia and makes their way towards them, and puts something in her mouth. “Fucking You-Must-Respect-Me-For-I-Am-Your-Leader — ‘The Great Zennosuke’.”

“He wasn’t that bad.” Rukia complacently says, looking amused at her friend’s rant.

The glockenspiel player sighs. “No, he wasn’t.” It doesn’t deter her from scowling. “But Keigo was being an idiot.”

“No more than usual.” Rukia grins crookedly, and Karin laughs at that.

“Oh, hey,” She lights up when she notices them, eyes resting on his briefly. She makes a bubble with her mouth and pops it with her teeth. Bubblegum. He can’t help but wonder… “You came.”

He nods, and hums in acknowledgement. He didn’t know that Keigo was a saxophone player. Now all those comments about ‘Afro-san-taichou’ made sense and Mizuiro’s unsympathetic replies in turn; the reason why Yuzu and Karin already knew them. Maybe he should have come here earlier — and see this oddity unfurl. He can’t be sure, but he thinks he saw the sylph with the frown play on the trumpets, standing well away from most people, eyes narrowed at her sheet music in deep dislike or deep concentration.

“I brought cupcakes.” Yuzu grins, Toushirou delegates and both Rukia and Karin cheer at the brilliance of having their personal audience.

 

*

 

One afternoon, Toushirou becomes Karin’s only audience, while he drinks tea and Karin begins to perform.

Her music enchants him, be it sweetly played or a conundrum of fine frenzies, slender fingers pressing back and forth on the keyboard as easily as sliding the pads of her fingers descending on a spine, the latter occurring more often than the former, unless he persuades her otherwise. He finds himself hanging out with her, doing his homework in her house while Karin plays tunes, occasionally being altruistic and capturing his moods, but more often than not she plays bouncy tunes that amuse her and make her laugh when she makes a mistake, though it breaks the momentum. He shuts his eyes and listens, thinks of impossible things, of Wonderland and bitter rain. His pen stills in his hand, and he never gets work done, though Toushirou likes the pretence that he does. Mainly because Karin sometimes talks, and though Toushirou can multitask, he cannot when it’s talking, listening and finishing homework.

“Play that again,” Toushirou requests and Karin grants his wish when she’s feeling indulgent. Usually she slows the tune once Yuzu enters the room, carrying the melody with pedals and crooked grins more often glimpsed on the Mad Hatter’s face, lamenting that she cannot have extra arms to reach and grab the homemade food until the melody reaches its end.

“Maybe later.” Karin says often, and plays another tune first before returning to the previous piece.

He falls asleep when she plays Satie’s music, titled something nonsensical and the first out of six, according to Karin, and wakes to a library where books are bursting to fall from their shelves, edging forward until a frog-like man angrily pushes them back until ‘they are to be used’. He reminds Toushirou of a bossy professor that is grumpily not getting his way, but is far too uncaring to raise his voice. Afar, there is a shriek, and an onslaught of presumably fallen books.

“Are you alright, Rin?” The frog-like man asks, clearly bored and thinking that his companion is an imbecile, nonetheless takes the books after all — hardback covers flapping with delight — peering through the bookcase. Hands emerge from the pile of books, and a boy with birdlike bone face, coughs and slowly appears from the wreckage.

“F-Fine.” Red-cheeked and mumbling, shoulders slumped with embarrassment; Rin pushes the books away and dusts himself off. His hair is layered dust white, streaked with russet locks. “Happens all the time…” He sneezes. The open books clatter before him, and, the frog-like man takes that as his cue to put the books back in place, leaving the nervous Rin to do the same on the other side, though in much more gentler tones, as if he has to coax them to take their place and not every book is willing to listen, snapping at his hands and vindictively happy once the pages cruelly catch his fingers and he yelps.

“Incoming,” A lanky boy with horns on his head says above, standing on the ceiling of books, coming into view. His feet are on the ceiling; his hair is pulled down by gravity. Toushirou jumps and everybody ignores him. “The White Rabbit’s house. Nemu, if you please.”

Toushirou moves out of the bookstalls and glances around him, the library both spacious yet claustrophobic simultaneously. The smell of stardust and faded ash is everywhere, settling on creases and freckles and nearly makes Toushirou sneeze. He’s just in time to catch a human-sized book swing open, and a slender man emerges from the picture book, leaving the white house that folds in on itself as the book is shut. It’s odd seeing paper stars twinkle before closing at the end of a fairytale. The lady — Nemu, Toushirou presumes — says in a monotonous voice, sighing to no one in particular, “No one ever takes the waterfall any more.”

The man pushes his glasses and does not quite smile in response. The candles flickering doused light lets his russet hair seem almost orange.

“Can you tell me where I can find books about the Snark?”

“That depends.” The froglike man with protuberant eyes answers, staring at Toushirou while Toushirou feels increasingly discomforted and needs to move away, far away. “Is he a Boojum?”

Before Toushirou can even ask, Rin tugs at his sleeve and shakes his head. It’s a good hint as any, and he takes it, wandering through the aisles, and sneezing between the dusty catacombs, while the candles float on above; and the librarians shuffle on behind them. He never does hear the answer.

Rin settles himself on a beanbag, velvet blue, and Toushirou sits on a soft green one. He leans back, stretches his legs, and closes his eyelids, growing heavier with every second. The beanbag hums approvingly, and tickles his ankles, not enough to rouse him. He falls asleep, and stirs at the sound of a squeak, lids lowering blearily.

The lady from before, the one who opened the book and let the bespectacled man in, joins them and pushes at the messy strands of hair of that falls onto Rin’s forehead, almost in a trance. She watches him, detachedly curious and ivory pale.

“Nemu,” Rin tries, cheeks crimson; his hands uselessly waving about in any direction and does nothing to stop her. “Um, Nemu.”

She ignores him and stares, dark eyes gazing through him, and she doesn’t pull away. Rin eventually pats her shoulder, and surrenders to the awkwardness of it all. He smiles shyly and it’s ridiculous and hilarious and terribly strange, but Nemu smiles shyly back.

He wakes up, limbs askew and his spine pressing into the sofa, and wonders why it feels like he’s been rejected.

“You talk in your sleep.” Karin tells him, pensive. She’s never looked less like Mad Hatter, light haloing her outline, hands resting on the black and white keys. “But I never know what you say.”

 

*

 

“Sir Toushirou, a pleasure.” The floating head grins, razor blade smile glinting in the shadows, darkened by black lips and its black heart. Its ears twitch as its lone head floats and spins above him, and Toushirou decides to hedge his bets on deciding that this Cheshire Cat is female. “How are you today?”

Toushirou sits up and tries to ignore the aether birds, perched against his shoulders, cooling his spine. Their feathers tickle his skin, soft like steamed ice, before their beaks dig into the corner of his neck.

The Cat grins and draws closer, gold eyes gleaming as it examines him, hardly caring that he doesn’t answer. Apparently that’s answer enough.

“She’s waiting.” The Cat purrs, close enough for Toushirou to feel its warm breath and under the soaking sun, her sinewy-silk fur turning to moon silver. Invisible claws touch his cheek, descending on the curve, and it might be a comfort except for the fact that the nails tear his skin.

“Who?”

“One who loves,” the Cat leers, and lets its grin stretch further, finding the joke in the mystery, “and the other who hates.”

 

*

 

“C’mon,” Karin says, blowing bubbles into the breeze. Spring is almost waning, caught in the pinnacle of its beauty, and daffodils surround them as they stroll in the park. “Just this once?”

Rukia smiles into her phone and turns away, cheeks glowing with happiness. Karin turns to Toushirou, appealing to him now and Toushirou quickly does not look at Karin directly, because if he does then it’s certain that he will have lost the battle.

“It’ll be fun!” The brunette tries with a winning smile. “And you can’t be a third wheel which I will be if you don’t go.”

Toushirou narrows his eyes and looks at her, suspicious. “That sounds more like blackmail instead of persuasion.”

“Blackmail is a form of persuasion.” Rukia muses, and covers the mouthpiece of her phone, swooping in, “or is it the other way around?”

“You would know.” Karin laughs, and Toushirou smirks.

“Whatever works.” Rukia replies breezily, unfazed in the slightest, “I regret nothing.”

“And neither will I, if Toushirou promises that he will stick around for Yuzu’s date and I don’t have to be the awkward third wheel.” Karin tries to punctuate her words meaningfully, and Toushirou exhales, stuffing his hands in his pockets. Karin blows more bubbles, mouth glistening as she breathes life in liquidated form. “It’ll be fun.”

Sceptical, he lifts an eyebrow. “Will it?”

“If it doesn’t, the next time you come over, you can totally pick the first song, okay? Or, I don’t know, you can pick a new song, and I’ll try to make it acoustic. How about that?” Karin shrugs, and Toushirou mulls it over. Rukia, oblivious, laughs at a joke heard on the other side.

“… just a movie, right?” Toushirou reasserting the supposed ‘date’, and watches Karin’s face brighten into a brilliant grin.

“Just a movie.” The musician nods, confirming, “and a snack afterwards. Yuzu is a little strange in her… courtship tactics.”

“I suppose it can’t get much stranger than the theme park.” Toushirou sighs, and agrees to join her in the art of being not-a-third-and-fourth-wheel. He had enjoyed himself on that day out. “Alright. When is it?”

His reward would have been a chance to blow some bubbles, but Toushirou declines, and parts ways with Karin, waiting for Rukia to snap her phone shut. Rukia is quiet until they actually reach their dorms, though has her moments of being strange and grinning to herself for no reason. Toushirou simply puts it down to Renji being Renji, and Rukia being Rukia; and both of them have springs in their steps.

“You two.” Rukia says out of the blue, and smiles knowingly. He catches a bit of irritation as well, the moment lasting only a second. “Yuzu’s not the only one who has strange courtship tactics.”

“Shut up, it’s not.” Toushirou brushes her words away as he opens the door his room. He knows what it is and isn’t.

Rukia says nothing, but her expression is enough to tell him that he isn’t fooling anybody. Toushirou rolls his eyes. She’s thinking too deeply into things that aren’t there.

Karin. Momo. Rukia. Matsumoto. The medic who likes wearing bunny ear hats and blowing a trumpet. The man who smiles like the sun without clunky armour after Yuzu now works there and Toushirou visits often. He keeps going wrong somewhere and all he has is a cornucopia of nowheres spiralling past pumpkin trees. Always leading him astray.

 

*

 

Perhaps he doesn’t visit the library enough, but he’s heard rumours of a librarian and her admirer spending their lunch breaks placing her chin on his shoulder and eternally bearing the curse of being taller. Yuzu laughs and gives her thanks with the gentlest of smiles, and her boyfriend, the timid and blushing Gardener, Yamada Hanatarou, stutters over his words and anecdotes and hands his fair lady a pretty flower plucked from his wallflower garden while mentioning this little tidbit. Karin grins and sticks her hip out, skinny blue jeans embracing her pose fully. She’s proud to be a short brat.

“Let’s move, guys, we can’t keep a movie waiting, can we?” Drawling, she takes the lead, Toushirou right beside her. “We’re not all romantic lazybones.”

Yuzu somewhat chokes, voice high pitched and caught in her throat, and Karin snickers; pleased to see a. Yamada reaches for her hand, and Yuzu smiles happily at him.

“I don’t think Rukia and Renji were ever this bad.” Toushirou deadpans, and the couple flush more.

“You’re teasing us!” In a pathetic attempt, the elder Kurosaki sister taps her sister’s shoulder in reprimand. “Stop it.”

“Of course.” Karin lets her mouth quirk into a half-smile, endlessly amused. “We’re all friends here.”

“You don’t have to chaperone us.” Yuzu mumbles, gazing at her sparkly shoes.

“I’d never do that.” Karin assures. “I’m just here for the entertainment.”

Toushirou offers his arm and Karin takes it, the memory of rose thorns scraping their clothes and lingering with threads and broken string flashing in his mind for a just a second, before he forgets under the crescent curve of her smile. The night sky shines above them, cut up diamonds laid out for the sea, waiting to be rolled away with popcorn and strawberry milkshakes.

 

*

 

“You’re here again.” The librarian with horns on his head states, and furrows his eyebrows, frowning at him, just as unwelcoming as before. He leans on the bookshelf, spiky head mussed up by the ebony wood and intricate designs, narrow faced and pointy. “Twice could be a coincidence, but.” His pen scurries on the paper, and the librarian tightens his grip on the book, holding everything in place. His spindly limbs narrow, much like a spider crawls in the dark and using minimal space to get by the tiniest of gaps; Toushirou is still unsure what makes him so uncomfortable in this section. “Are you looking for something?”

Toushirou shakes his head, a petulant boy trapped in a lost world where he can’t find the floating numerical numbers who wish to float back in linear parallel lines. “I don’t think so.”

“Perhaps,” the frogman from before intrudes, head poking from the other side, propped by his elbows, as he stares at Toushirou unblinkingly. “Perhaps there’s a place he wants to go.”

“Speak to him directly, there’s a good man.” The first librarian says with a flicker of disdain as he glances at his colleague, before returning to the visitor. He seems to take as much interest in this as a gnat, struggling to retain concentration on one single thing if it isn’t interesting enough. “Is there?”

“No.” In the distance, a man with spectacles and white hair sighs, and shuffles to the next stall. With a frown, the book shuts in his hand as he pushes up his glasses, and lines appear on his forehead as if he knows he is being watched and that person better stop. Toushirou does so and looks at the librarians.

“Hm.” Frogman muses over this, eyes glossy as he weighs down the options, water and sodium carbonate colliding, “then there might be a place someone wants you to be.” 

“That might work.” Akon says, head tilted sideways and fingers twisted in his hair, the tendrils messily hanging loose against the nape of his neck. “Certainly, it’s possible. Pick a destination and the book will lead the way. Rin?”

The voice, as always, come from nowhere, resounding on dog-eared pages and books with open covers; squeaking slightly with the bashful meekness. “On it.” Only then does he shuffle into view, nervous and knock-kneed, unkempt yet sprightly, somewhat subdued in his world of giants. “This way.” He smiles like a child, seeing the world’s beauty with innocence, happy to help, and Toushirou, somewhat stunned, follows him.

He stares into a big, black book, pages blotted completely by ink, and Toushirou is at a loss. He turns to face Rin, still glimpsing the text of darkness through the corner of his eye. “Am I supposed to walk into it? Just like that?” He’s not sure what he’s looking for, assurance, their strange Wonderland logic, something. It doesn’t matter that he’s seen the reverse. Before, there were stars, moonstruck flowers, a white picket house with a white picket fence. Here, there is pure darkness: midnight. Or nothing. The end of the dream, the nightmare, and the something in between. The great unknown.

Akon considers with a small shrug, though he remains sardonic, nails drumming against printed paper. “You could run if you like.”

“It’s easy,” Rin mumbles, meeting his eyes directly with some difficulty, though his earnestness is never absent, “two steps and you’re there.”

Tentatively, Toushirou touches the page, not sure what to expect. The paper is cold to touch and sends him shivering, fingertips scorched and singed from the contact. But the ink remains on page, and does not drip into his skin, though it almost feels as if it did, seeping invisibly through pores and into the bloodstream. Toushirou breathes out, feels stupid, feels everyone’s eyes on him, as if he’s the entertainer there to please them with his disappearing act. He pushes harder, palms flat on the page, surprised when the molecules shift and his hand suddenly slips through the paper into the other side and Toushirou cannot see that part of his hand. He meets nothing but thin air, warmer now. He takes another breath, one for luck, one for serendipity, and another for serenity, and steps through. His skin compresses, tight against his bones, as he passes through and the curious sensation remains until he completely crosses over one realm to another and he can’t go back.

This turns out to be a mistake.

In the darkness, Toushirou searches for light and finds nothing but brick walls, pressing against him and pushing his shoulders inwards. There’s barely enough room to move, and when he tries to step back, he’s unsuccessful. There’s something under his feet, slippery and round, his back crashes into the brick wall and there’s nothing to grip onto with his hands; and it’s painful to straighten his elbows, rough walls scraping his skin. He can hear voices, muffled by the brick wall, and strains his ears in an attempt to recognise them, only just able to turn his head and press his ear against the wall that the sound is loudest. He tries to speak, produce words that the people on the other side might hear and ends up coughing, a vain effort. The voices chant in unison, and in one glorious instant, he realizes that it’s a countdown. He’s listening to a countdown, there’s smoke in his lungs, and he’s stuck in a chimney. There’s a sphere beneath him. And he’s stuck in the chimney. The cannonball chimney of the Duchess’ house.

He knocks on the brick wall, desperately to no avail, drowned out by the voices on the other side, pace quickening with every decreasing number and the synchronized clapping. His hands scrabble across the chimney walls, groping for nooks or crannies, anything that will help him climb out of the goddamn chimney before the cannonball — and it’s too late.

He flies. He soars. He screams and falls.

Toushirou never wants to jump out of a chimney again, forced upwards by a fucking cannonball and feels like a jack-in-a-box the next morning, limbs covered in soot. Everything hurts.

Toushirou buries his head in his pillow, and hopes that’s it’s the weekend. It’s not — it might be — he can’t quite recall thanks to the pounding in his foggy mind. Wait. There’s someone knocking on the door and saying otherwise. For once, Toushirou closes his eyes and pretends that its simple minded mumbles instead, marbles rolling across the floor.

He opens his eyes to see the medic with the bunny hat, the one with matching eyes and pigtails, still staring at him as if he’s an idiot, an angry look on her face. She opens her mouth and spits out dragonflies hovering above ripples, leaping fish that cause tsunamis; she drags her slender hands down his face and his throat, fingers brushing pathways of ash and charcoal. The sunlight is filtered by the leaves above them, and he can smell fresh water in the air.

“You,” a girl with tawny hair and hazel eyes says to him, clear and sharp through her fringe, as she pulls her hair into a ponytail to one side of her shoulder, “need a heck of a lot of soap before we even think about fixing those bones. You’re just lucky that Sis isn’t here at the moment — she’s a very careful person, and Riruka and I aren’t as gentle as she would be.”

Riruka brays in laughter, and Toushirou has a split second to prepare for the attack of water and soap brusquely scrubbing his skin. When he opens his eyes to his room, and identifies that it’s Rukia still knocking on his door, his head hurts and Toushirou swears he can taste aloe vera in his mouth. And ash residue.

His cheeks are red and rubbed raw, and as he slowly makes his way to open the door, he can feel his entire face tingling.

“You look—” Rukia begins, dressed in blue.

“Yeah.” If he’s honest, he’s starting to feel a little woozy. His eyes shut momentarily, nails digging into his skin so he feel that pain, use it as a lifeboat to keep him here. “I’m… yeah.”

“Sleep, I’ve got your back.” His best friend smiles, and gives him a soft push to go back to bed. He’s practically boneless when he tugs the duvet and dreams of nothing at all.

 

*

 

“That was unexpected.” Somewhat listlessly, Hiyosu — frogman Hiyosu — does not quite sigh and Akon does not quite sniff. Both remain statuesque, frozen statues that seem out of place with Toushirou, or maybe it’s the other way around and Toushirou is out of place in a land of falling, flapping books, that sneeze and give birth to dust-moths because he moves constantly, never quite sure what to do. Someone else mutters quite audibly: “didn’t expect you to be back so soon.”

“That, um,” Rin meekly says, neck sinking into his chest, and into the embrace of the willowy Eaglet, “that doesn’t usually happen.”

“Let’s try again,” Akon decides, dismissive of everything else and flicks the pages until the darkness is tucked away, and night-time exists within bright and burning stars and crinkled moons, and even that is smoothed and folded into clear daylight where trees and laughter belong together with the field of hyacinths. “How does this look to you?”

Bright. Iridescent. Wild.

“Yeah, it’s good.” A lesson learnt long ago: never argue with librarians. Not unless you know what you truly want.

“Well then, step through.” Hiyosu snorts, and motions the path with his eyes that Toushirou duly follows in actual footsteps.

This time there is no pressure, no doubt; and when he exchanges the library for the wilderness, the sensation is as gentle as a zephyr sweeping past locks of hair. Inhaling fresh air, Toushirou carefully examines the hyacinths, asks them questions and waits for them to respond, breathing in their scent. The floras don’t reply, but the trees above do, shaking the branches on the trees, rustling the leaves freely and starting the fall of an apple; wing-scuppered with laughter.

“My sister,” one tree announces, voice clear and deep as the river current, “my dear sister could have been a queen.”

“The Queen of Hearts, they’d have called me, instead of the Red Queen.” Another tree supplies, similar yet softer, smiling in a meandering way. “But I suppose it was not meant to be.”

“But then, if it were to be,” — and Toushirou hides a smile as he recalls the Disney counterparts, how here would be the part where this one might say contrariwise, once on a lazy summer’s delight — “why, we would hardly have to wait so long to see you again, would we?”

Heads emerge from the trees, both black-haired, both blue-eyed, both staring at him in fond amusement; hanging upside down like bats, their transition from the tree to the ground can only be described as less than graceful, and Toushirou helps both sisters disentangle the leaves from their hair with a sigh playing on his lips.

“Then again, with the rule of how courtesy goes, and how it was utterly forgotten on all parts, perhaps it’s best that none of us are royalty?” Hisana says, fingertips stroking the curve of his cheek, before she glances sideways to communicate silently with her younger sister — the other Tweedle. Rukia shrugs, but she leans towards them, all the same, soft locks resting on his shoulder.

“Why didn’t you become Queen?” Toushirou asks, curious. Wide eyed, he stares and waits.

Hisana exhales, eyes shuttering in the daylight. “What I had was enough.” There’s a sickle moon caught in her hair, as she shifts slightly, smoothing the creases of her stripy dress, distilled in sadness. “The wilderness, Rukia, the kingdom of forget-me-nots… that was more than enough.”

“For you.” Toushirou voices what the Tweedles do not.

Hisana nods, confirming. “For me.” She lifts her shoulder, drops it, easily as if she was taking apart the petals of the flowers nearby and putting them back together. “For him — once,” Hisana looks at him, and here, here, Toushirou supposes, is where dreams and realities diverge. His throat dries. “Once, I think, it could have been.”

“But Kings,” Rukia stands up, and stretches her limbs, reaches for the sky and the ground with her hands, fingers splayed, “Red Kings, especially, cannot abide people with bare feet.”

Hisana blushes, bright red, before she bursts into a trill of laughter unexpectedly, unable to hide her sunlit grin. “You would have been an awful sister-in-law.”

“To be awful,” Toushirou hears the voice of the Cheshire Cat before it appears below, in askance for a belly scratching. “Is the very best in-law to be.”

“Oh, be quiet, catling.” Hisana smiles, deviously light-hearted, and Rukia takes it as her opportunity to catch said Cheshire Catling, arms thrown around it. Her fingers disappear into bushy electric blue fur, tickling his tummy and the Cheshire Kitten — it is too small to be a Cat — purrs, before Rukia teasingly stops, and faces the wrath of a glaring kitten who demands more attention. The Catling seems to have forgotten its ability to fade away as it pleases.

“It’s Cat,” the Cheshire Kitten insists grumpily, paws raised in the air and absorbing the slow submerging sun.

“Shush, catling.” Rukia murmurs, legs tucked in under her dress, and the Cheshire Catling must not hear her under his pleased purr, a low rumble that could easily be misconstrued as a plea for food and Yuzu’s mushroom soup.

 

*

 

“Alright,” Renji says, on the computer screen, “from the top!”

Phone conversations and emails clearly don’t cut it for these two — Toushirou suppresses a sigh, and frowns when Karin elbows him, who looks at him as if she’s read his mind — and Rukia beams at her doting boyfriend, all three relaxing on Rukia’s bed while Renji and Momo and Izuru sit on the other side of the screen, sheets and sheets of paper scattered upon them. Momo would have stapled the script together, but since it’s the first time reading — and Renji has sworn to do accents that never last more than ten seconds, according to Izuru — it clearly calls for a mess to be made. Everyone has a part to play.

“You guys better be here when the show starts.”

“Play the video again, darling, and we’ll see.” Renji cockily says, and Rukia rolls her eyes and doesn’t until Renji is prodded by Momo, laughing and holding Izuru’s arm. He rubs his neck and swears upon pinafores and cutlasses; the choice the performance should have been. “First night, first row, count us in.”

Satisfied, Rukia states that she’s only playing the song because she knows he loves it so much, and they’ll start with reading the script properly immediately afterwards. They all agree in serious expressions, Renji doing so with an eye patch. Rukia presses play. Together, they make pirates stealthily sneak across the bedroom with catlike tread.

 

*

 

Toushirou wakes up, and Karin’s warmth is gone. It’s not that they’ve settled into routine, but they have a tendency to spend time in together at the strangest moments; he’ll search her out when he’s read this good book, or she’ll find him because she’d like to go to a music shop and they’re tastes in music are fairly similar with a few exceptions. (Mainly K-Pop.) They study at the library together, mostly in silence, because she likes having him around and not feel so lazy, whereas Toushirou feels more productive with her presence, and in the library is a good way to channel revising — and sporadically glimpse at the tall and short, thin and fat, librarians bickering about Freud and Jung, Dracula and Bunnicula, DC and Marvel, serious everyday conversations that librarians should know about while the other two seem to pay no attention to these arguments. Occasionally, Karin is too tired to walk back to her home, or it’s the other way around, since she ‘seduced’ him with music, or the benefits reaped with having Rukia as a roommate and neither of them can be bothered to make the floor more comfy, so they settle on sharing the bed, too tired to care. Rukia and Yuzu have had their fair share of pictures, nothing compromising, they promise.

Yawning, there’s a crick in Toushirou’s neck and at that exact moment, when he sits up, the door opens and Karin is grinning sheepishly, fuzzy bed hair left sticking at awkward angles, a breakfast tray in hand.

“Awesome, you’re awake.” Karin says, and places the tray down on the bed; he can’t remember whose it belongs to. “Thought I’d return the favour, and treat you to a breakfast in bed.”

“Did you make it yourself?” He asks with a smile, reaching for the mug of coffee.

“Hey,” Karin mock-frowns, and remains ambiguous on the matter. “I can cook too.”

“I know.” Toushirou agrees and takes a sip. When she sets her mind to it, Karin is a very good cook.

“So.” Settling comfortably on her side of the bed, sitting cross-legged and in a t-shirt that might actually be his, Karin asks, “would you like egg or bacon?”

“I can’t have both?”

She scrunches up her nose, and it’s ridiculously endearing. “No way, not if we’re sharing breakfast in my room. It’s either one or the other.”

“Bacon it is.” Toushirou decides with authority.

“A very good choice.”

Keigo calls it a ‘walk of shame’, pointing out his sleep-heavy clothes, as Toushirou makes his way through the kitchen that morning; Toushirou assures it is not. A walk of shame implies that something happened in the night, and nothing happened that Toushirou didn’t regret, nothing more than something chaste. Keigo pulls a face like he thinks that isn’t the actual definition.

“So where were you?” Mizuiro asks, grabbing pop-tarts, and glances at them with an amused expression.

“Karin’s.” Toushirou replies automatically, and Keigo rolls his eyes.

“And nothing happened.” He sniffs, sceptical. “You know, I wake up in the morning, sometimes, and she’s here making cupcakes?” Toushirou remembers that day — they were damn good cupcakes, and Toushirou had helped her make the green icing on top. He’d taken mini-marshmallows from Rukia’s cupboard and added them into the mix. It was one time. “You don’t even see the look on your face, do you?”

“Would that I could, Keigo.” Toushirou deadpans.

“She’s basically your girlfriend.” Mizuiro states, and passes him a steel saucepan, and Toushirou cannot help but lift an eyebrow at. Do they want to make him cook for them? “Didn’t Rukia-chan give her blessing already?”

“I did.” Rukia nods, yawning, joining them, arms around her human sized rabbit and dumping it on her seat while she collects the ingredients for her protein shake. “Didn’t seem to take the hint.”

“Whatever.” Toushirou frowns and shakes his head, suddenly overcome by a bout of sleepiness. “I’m going.”

The Hatter greets him with a smile and a grin, spins around him and asks quite delightedly, where has he been.

 

*

 

“Does it bother you?” Tatsuki asks, sitting on mushrooms with Ichigo, long legs looped together like vines of ivy. She swipes the trilby off his orange head and spins the fancy hat in her hands. “That you never wear anything other than pyjamas?”

This is not strictly true. He has worn other clothes when falling asleep — shorts, jeans, once forgoing them altogether — but pyjama’s (and by extension, dressing gowns) are the most comfortable, if at times, terribly inconvenient, clothes to wear. Never slippers or socks, unless he manages to find some before his visit ends. Most of the time, the denizens make fun of his pictured t-shirts, and Toushirou has learnt to simply ignore them. He wishes that he had more plain pyjamas.

Nonetheless, Toushirou bristles, and feels his face grow hot. The mushroom he sits on mumbles that he shouldn’t move so much or he’ll be eaten. “I do not!”

“You do.” Ichigo flatly says, and his mouse ears twitch in agreement. Toushirou frowns and pretends that the Dormouse is Mickey Mouse instead.

“Wonderland could fix that, if you let it.” Tatsuki says, looking at him, considering. She juts her chin out, places her hand on the curve of her jaw, and smirks. “Though, I kinda like your strange outfits.”

Ichigo pulls a face and grumbles under his breath. Tatsuki laughs and tugs his ears.

 

*

 

Among other things that Toushirou knows about the bubbly Yuzu when sitting next together on the band stands, it’s that he is most definitely living in the same house with her next year. It slowly starts with the build up of sudoku, which he is good at and she is not so good at, and crosswords, which neither are good at all though Yuzu usually knows a few more than he does, and then eventually house property, which can be incredibly fun — imagining a makeshift life where they chase the loud neighbourhood kids off their lawn. As the term passes, and the marching band marches to it’s symphony of cacophony, the possibility seemed more ideal. Especially with having Hanatarou, Karin and Rukia as roommates. And a piano.

Still. It’s Yuzu that Toushirou goes house hunting with.

“Yes,” Yuzu nods as she walks into the house, smile lighting up her entire face, as her eyes sweep across approvingly, “I think this is it.”

“Oh, honey, we’re home.” Rukia calls in unison with Karin, the door opening, and Yuzu and Toushirou walk to greet them. Karin’s lent her fedora to the flustered future-brother-in-law, and given him an ascot. It’s amazing how much of Beatle he looks like.

“I’m sorry I’m late.” Yamada says, attempting an accent and sticking his cheeks out. Rukia is three seconds away from coddling him, Toushirou swears.

“Well.” Toushirou furrows his brows and crosses his arms. “What sort of time do you call this?”

Yuzu giggles, and it’s infectious; this sad case of the ‘fuzzies’, warm and spreading over his chest, the clapping of hands that sing like birds taking flight.

“This is definitely the place.”

 

*

 

It’s all in the metaphors.

The murder of crows. The congregation of magpies. The unkindness of ravens. All of their sorrows used in florescent amalgamation, and paint a larger than life stage — the skull, the rose, the ewe — Shakespeare crafts his words brilliantly and builds a stage that can be adapted into universal truths. Believe in the metaphors, have faith in them, and something amazing will come. It’s not the story that makes him brilliant, but how he utilises it. And the words, oh, his words…

At least that’s what Matsumoto-sensei believes. The cake is a metaphor, the fox is a metaphor and the scarf — especially woollen scarves — are a metaphor.

Maybe that’s what Shakespeare is: a really big metaphor.

Maybe that’s what Wonderland is.

And yet, if it is, then Toushirou can’t understand what the crows and the magpies and the ravens represent; surrounding him as he slowly descends from the spiral staircase. Though none perch on the banister, all of them watch him. He’s glad that none have three eyes. They already unnerve him with their beady two-eyed stares, even though they mean no harm. He hopes.

He is stuck in a desert, where the trees had shed their leaves for feathers, and the heat is a mixture of hot-cold and cold-hot.

The metal is fraying under his feet, creaking into a different shape with every step he takes. It doesn’t matter if he steps lightly or heavily, the staircase is falling apart, he can do nothing to stop it. But with each step he takes, he remains in the exact same spot.

“Well, that’s not true.” A raven breaks the mould, and joins him. The silver changes to blue, once the shadow is cast overhead. After a moment of deliberation, a crow and a magpie join them, shadows red and yellow. “To go up, one must go down.”

The magpie looks at the crow and caws. “But if you want to go down, you can’t go up.”

That’s very unhelpful.

Apropos of nothing, the crow asks. “Did you ever find her?”

“Who?”

“I don’t think you ever said.” The raven muses, opening his wings. The outstretched feathers look navy blue, and the sand below turns to water, saline and blue, reflecting a moon-skimmed sky. Toushirou can taste the salty breeze in his mouth. The trees remain, sticking out of the water like rocks and weeds and the birds in their congregations, murders and unkindnesses continue to play the audience, scattered and settled. “But you were looking for her, quite some time ago.”

“Oh.” Toushirou sits down, and the stairs carry his weight, powder soft, and framed like a constellation. He recalls sunflowers striped against orange skies. “Yes, I found her.”

“And?” The magpie enquires and nips at the starlight. Its beak passes through thin air.

“She didn’t recognise me.” Toushirou sighs, shrugs, doesn’t quite know what else to say. So many words, and yet none of them are the right ones. “I thought she might, but. There are times when I think she… that maybe, there’s a chance. And then. Not. It’s gone.” He pushes his hair from his forehead, and hates how stilted and broken up he sounds. “She doesn’t remember.” He sighs, and that’s the simple truth of it.

“But,” the crow sounds crestfallen, and hops a little nearer, “she left. For you.”

“Love isn’t always enough.” The raven sighs, and if it was a little bit more human, it might be rolling his eyes, saying this a many times before. “Life happens.”

“Still.” The magpie says, a little thoughtful, “she seems to remember a little of her former life. That’s something.” The bird deliberates and perches itself on Toushirou’s foot. “I’ve heard rumours, about this sort of thing.” The beak opens and closes. “Theories, really. For those who believe.”

“Out with it.” The raven drawls.

“Fine, fine.” The magpie sounds a little ruffled, but obeys nonetheless. “If she really loved you, felt that strongly, then it’s possible she was reborn in your world. But she wouldn’t remember you. Sure, memory and skin residue from her shape shifting self might carry through; fragments remain for her fixed form. But only in the vaguest sense. She would never get her memories back.”

“Are you sure it’s her?” The crow asks cautiously, tentatively. Softly.

“Yeah.” The light in her eyes, the way she pronounced certain things, there’s no doubt. He smiles involuntarily, more in reminisce than in pain. “She couldn’t be anyone else.” When the raven perches itself on his shoulder, Toushirou shrugs him off, and it moves to his pulled up knee instead.

“Well. Here’s something different.” The magpie decides, drawling. “Let’s see if we can carry you out of here.”

“Um.”

“Sounds good to me!” The crow jumps at the idea, flying over his shoulders and digs its claws into Toushirou’s skin. The magpie follows suit. He winces, but says nothing.

The raven is the only one who doesn’t, preferring to stay where it is. “Here’s how it is. Don’t look down.”

“Wait—”

If the magpie could smile, it would, Toushirou bets, as he hears the unrestrained joy. “Too late!” It says as it settles on his back.

As a matter of fact, it isn’t looking down that’s the problem. It’s that the crow squabbles with the raven, and the magpie alone cannot hold on to him, with the sudden loss of help is not enough to stop the magpie from squawking and letting him go. And falling. And not catching him.

Even then, the other magpies and ravens and crows don’t offer a helping hand, and prefer to pertain to their observing activities.

He wakes up, propping himself awkwardly on his elbows, and can’t think of what to say. His throat feels thick and his head’s spinning. There’s a bruise on his shoulder.

“You alright?” Mizuiro asks, later that morning, washing his breakfast bowl clean in the sink. Keigo is rubbing Rukia’s shoulders, while she tries to concentrate and recall her words and make them her own, garbling them with half-hummed notes that are meant to play from a different instrument. Keigo hums along, free hand drumming on the table.

“I dreamt that a magpie dropped me.” Toushirou states, not quite certain what to make of that. What he actually meant to say was: I feel a little dizzy.

Keigo is surprisingly insightful when it comes to dream-logic. “Maybe you weren’t shiny enough?”

“He’s plenty shiny enough.” Rukia mumbles, her head furrowed in her arms and Mizuiro nods sympathetically, and passes her the key to all solutions: caffeine. Rukia looks up and gives them all a morning hug and then a beautiful starlet smile. “You’re very shiny.”

Toushirou feels better and grins, a little stupidly. “Tell that to the magpie.”

 

*

 

“Blue or yellow?” Rukia asks Yuzu, twirling in her plain white pinafore. Yuzu is sketching, and Rukia enjoys pestering her with questions about the outfits that she might design, if only that she could. It does no harm to stop mere designs, and here, Rukia is the star of the show. On paper, measuring tape, and witches and wizardry.

“I thought you’re in red?” Yuzu laughs, as she shades in a doodled black fringe that falls across her face, thin lines that caricature his roommate precisely.

“Well, yes, but.” She squirms, and Karin answers it, in the off chance that she has a psychic link to her sister.

“Yellow. If I was going to direct the play, I’d put you in yellow.”

 

*

 

Marching band competitions are fierce. If Toushirou thought school marching band competitions were bad, they’ve got nothing when it comes to university marching bands. (They also don’t have an awkward Byakuya and a cheering Hisana.)

“Hold still,” Yuzu says, painting war colours on his face as proof of their undying support. He’s promised to do the same to her face, after Hanatarou has snapped the photo so he can use it as a reference. “There we go.”

“Thanks.” He nods, and Yuzu passes the task of Supportive War Paint onto him. All three of them wait, for the marching band to assemble and for the drum major to take the stage.

For once, the ‘Great Zennosuke’ is silent, uncannily still. Everyone is quiet. They wait. Then — Zennosuke moves, and it’s a collision of electrical chaos in control, everything moving at once. His arms flap about, stylized, precise, with purpose, and there’s the result of his hard work and his marching’s band dedication working in unison. They glide across the pitch, flawless with their instruments, and it’s perfect. It’s wonderful.

He spots Karin, spots Rukia, spots Keigo, sweating, heaving, then catches the flushed faces of each and every one of them, the audience a wild frenzy of clapping. Yuzu is beyond ecstatic, Yamada is amazed, and Toushirou has just been swept away.

All of them bear flawless grins.

“They’ve got to win.” Toushirou says, still a little breathless, not really talking to anyone though he knows his friends are listening. “There’s no way they can’t win.”

“It’s not about winning that matters.” Yuzu reminds him with a silly grin, faux-serious. “It’s about being the best you’ve ever been.”

 

*

 

Time is a man with his top hat punched right through and sits with a garden party directly beneath a clock tower. Time is a thief of the steampunk designer; wearing a mishmash of everyone’s clothes and making it work. Time is Abarai Renji many a times taller than he is in real life, legs gangly and arms spindly. That’s not right — the Renji he knows is much brawnier, more muscles than slender — Wonderland’s interpretation has altered him. There are cogs on his waistcoat, broken and whole, and needle-hands scattered across his pant legs.

Time is occasionally friends with the White Rabbit and no longer with the Mad Hatter.

“Toushirou,” Renji bows, and stands up from his ivory white chair, carved with plenty of ornate holes, the same gruff and boisterous man that Toushirou recognizes, grinning in his ever-so-crooked manner that Rukia constantly talks about. It’s a tiny circular table, compared to insurmountable richness of other majesties, immeasurable and elaborate. This is simple, clean and white. “How is Karin these days?”

“You should ask her yourself.” Toushirou blithely says, deciding to pull up a chair and sit down.

Renji chuckles, voice a deeper tenor than Toushirou recalls. “One day. Usually a simple hello is enough to warrant a teacup chucked in my direction.”

“Is Karin always the one who’s chucking?” He can’t help but lift an eyebrow. The Dormouse is protective about his sister — a trait which the earth counterpart of Hatter shares when it comes to her twin sister, and likewise, vice versa. 

Renji tips his battered hat, mutely conceding. His teeth flash white, not unlike the crescent shaped mouth of the Cheshire Cats, whatever form it takes.

“Tea?” He asks, snapping his fingers, and letting a small feast of confectionary appear onto the circular table.

“I thought that only the Hatter had unbirthday parties.” Toushirou states, while pouring the teapot into his cup.

“Technicalities. But this isn’t an unbirthday. This is a birthday party.” Renji smirks. “Yours.”

“Cheat.” It’s nowhere near December. But then this is Time he is conversing with; and Time can lie, like any other person.

Renji shrugs, abundantly careless. He holds out his cup, and Toushirou acts as the host and dutifully pours. His wry grin is there nonetheless. “Perhaps.”

Toushirou looks at him, carefully. He’s not sure why he’s never asked other Wonderlandians this before, but he’s asking now. “What do you want?”

“Ah.” The grin lessens now, though it lingers, shrinking in size but never permanently leaving. “A trade. You have something of mine in your pocket. A friend’s.”

It triggers a memory in the back of his mind. Something that he can’t quite picture, the images blur in his head, raging against a current of wind. Slowly, he puts his hand in the pocket of his dressing gown, not certain what to expect. It’s cold, and round, and tick-tick-shakes as Toushirou pulls it out, fingers curling around the shape.

A golden pocket watch.

He has no need of it — kept it and forgot it — and so he tosses it to Renji, who catches the golden pocket watch, intersperses it between his fingers, and makes it disappear behind his ear. The reverse magician trick.

“Ta.” Renji grins, and continues to lean back on his chair, far too much, but never stumbles and falls. Another trick of his perhaps, suspending the moment, if not a brilliant balancing act. “Well, if you can’t give Karin my best, tell her this—”

“You should really tell her yourself.” Toushirou mumbles with a weary sigh. He has no patience for being a messenger, especially when he’s missed dates and places he’s supposed to be, when he can’t control the destination.

“Six steps sideways.” He grins once more, and ignores Toushirou. “She’ll know what it’ll mean.”

Renji tips his hat once more, a gentleman thief bidding adieu, cogs turning and whirring counter-clockwise with muscle bound memory, Toushirou can hear the strum of a cello, then silence and bleached out existence.

 

*

 

They christen the apartment with weekend Disney movies.

They still live in their current separate living commodes, but as Yuzu says, there’s no point not making their new home comfortable in the meantime. That’s good practice. Therefore, to avoid dust, spiders and phantom poltergeists, each weekend they have to clean and stay the night, camping out on sofas or sleeping bags, and watch a new movie each time.

“Tchaikovsky.” Karin sighs happily as she settles into the sofa, and presses play. “This is why Sleeping Beauty is the best.”

“Don’t forget the dragon.” Toushirou nudges her, and Karin smiles lopsidedly at him, indulgent.

“Right. Who could forget the dragon?” Karin nods, and leans into his side, as his arm wraps around her waist. He can feel her grin hidden on his shoulder. “But mostly Tchaikovsky.”

He doesn’t really have the heart to disagree.

He does disagree with how often Karin shifts, squirming as she tries to make herself comfortable, because he has to move as well, and Karin has bony elbows, ow, she’s not meant to move like that. Eventually, she sits on his lap, his mouth on hers. Her shirt is pushed up, and she’s soft and warm. Karin’s hands are clinging onto his shirt instead of being looped around his neck, and their legs are knocking against each other and he’s kissing her, because Karin won’t shut up about Tchaikovsky, and the situation is not nearly as awkward as perhaps it should have been and is actually kind of, well, perfect.

“See?” Karin whispers millimetres away from his lips, as his knee fits between hers, and she’s laughing breathlessly, then kissing him, “Tchaikovsky is sexy.”

“Quiet.” Toushirou murmurs lazily, voice practically a growl. It’s a new delight knowing that he makes her shiver, breath hitching, and they’re soon to be a desperate mess on the floor. Maybe she’s right. “Um.”

“Oh no.” Karin grins in that mischievous manner that Toushirou has recognised all too well, settling on top of him, wiggling her hips just enough to be a fucking tease. “You are going to admit it, and then we are going to continue.”

He kisses her first, pulling her close and then with butterfly soft words, tells her, pressed to her throat.

Karin does not have a problem with this.

 

*

 

Rukia takes to smirking insufferably after they reveal that they’re in a relationship.

“We’re not that bad!” Karin insists, cheeks pinkish nonetheless. “Compare us to my sister and Hanatarou!”

“Or you and Renji.” Toushirou adds, and his girlfriend flashes him a grateful smile.

“I rest my case.” Rukia folds her arms and smirks once more. They realize what they’ve done.

Karin grumbles under her breath and Toushirou frowns at his friend, and both of them refuse to talk to Rukia. Until the movie of mermaids begins playing.

 

*

 

“Twelve steps back, six steps sideways.” The Mad Hatter knits her brows together and shares a glance with her brother. She bites the corner of her lip and then turns to face Toushirou once more, trying to not appear unruffled. “Let’s go.” Reaching for Toushirou’s hand, they move slightly out of synch, and twirl to a new plane.

They stand surrounded in a hall of mirrors. Some are cracked, some are distorted, and others are whole. Each of them reflect something different — for a little vanity, Toushirou sees himself tall and thin, then short and stumpy. Karin snickers at the comparisons of herself.

A second later, Ichigo joins them.

“Yuzu,” The Dormouse says instantly, eyes sharp and searching.

“She’s here?” Karin blinks, envy showing at the bonus of having a mouse’s nose, then turns, glancing at the mirror-reflections that skitter away from her. She stalks off in one direction, Ichigo another, and Toushirou tries a different path, not quite sure what to expect, or who to find. He’s certain it’s Yuzu, the March Hare, but whether she looks more like her brother or her sister is a mystery unconfirmed.

He wanders aimlessly, as he’s done so many times before, forging new footsteps that clovers cover up. It’s a maze of looking glasses, posers all around, smirking, smiling, frowning, hands up, hands down, hand standing, or attempting a new yoga position that inevitably ends with a cartwheel. All share his face.

He wonders what the Cheshire Cat would be like here, would he see only one shade? Or would the technicolour aspects grin until another moment passed, and his fur changed stripes, and then another Cat takes its place on the mirror and the field?

One reflection breathes on the other side of the mirror, and paints an arrow for him to follow. Toushirou lifts an eyebrow, but the reflection of him looks earnest, gesturing with his hands as well, in a way that Toushirou doesn’t quite believe he would move, much more bohemian and emphatic than he has ever been. Other Toushirou reflections join in, aiding the original with a kind of Mexican wave follow-on, which Toushirou hastily takes to be his cue. It’s not every dream that his multiple reflections tell him what to do.

The hallway becomes a maze, branching out in different directions. The reflections still tell him what to do, eventually guiding him to an open space.

Toushirou meets Ichigo there, his arms folded across his chest, mouth pursed into a thoughtful frown. His mouse ears twitch at his footsteps, and he half-turns to look who it is, disappointment visible for a spilt second, nearly a frown, before he returns to the mirror. Toushirou approaches, slowly, feet heavy. The Dormouse sighs, shrugs, and then opens his mouth to speak, hand on the mirror, pushing the surface. Unable to pass through.

“Meet the March Hare, Toushirou.” Ichigo murmurs, not tearing his eyes away from his found sister.

Yuzu smiles sadly at him on the other side, slim legs pulled up to her chest like a marionette, and furry brown bunny ears flopping over head, it’s a hello said over seven seas and a window pane. Her face is warm and apple soft, tilted to the side in polite interest, before changing into open friendliness, a genuine lovely smile. Her mouth parts and she tries to speak, and perhaps she does, but there’s a distance between them that words won’t cross. Toushirou can’t lip read.

That’s okay, he can guess. “Hello.” Toushirou says, sitting down besides the standing Dormouse. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Perhaps the March Hare can lip read, because her pretty face transforms brilliantly into a shining star, and this is the Yuzu that Toushirou knows and feels at ease with. This is the Yuzu that Toushirou can imagine designing Hogwarts uniform because Rukia wants to be a Ravenclaw and Yuzu wants to be a Hufflepuff at all costs. This is the Yuzu that Toushirou doesn’t know, beautiful; she’s finally not alone. The March Hare glows.

“How did you get there?” Bemused, Ichigo asks, lifting an eyebrow, tapping on the looking glass and Yuzu looks down and twiddles her thumbs, wriggles her toes. Her downcast ears aren’t enough to shield the spread of light pink across her fine features. The Dormouse sighs, huffing in exasperation. “Never mind.”

“Oh.”

When Karin the Hatter finds Yuzu the March Hare, there is stunned silence after her discovery, that neither Ichigo nor Toushirou can face, though Ichigo half-turns, expression unreadable from Toushirou’s perspective. Her footsteps reverberate on the verdant clover earth, and both he and the Dormouse wait for Karin to join them, dazed as she is, falling to her knees once the March Hare looks up, eyes wide and glistening, mouth widening with a grin. The two sisters look nearly identical in that moment, their vulnerability torn open for all of Wonderland to see.

“Yuzu.” Karin says inaudibly, hardly daring to believe it. Like Ichigo, the palm of her hand rests on the mirror, and on the other side, Yuzu connects them, different levels for a broken circle. “Hey, we found you.”

The Dormouse crouches, and the March Hare shifts slightly, adjusting themselves for a Tea Party, and suddenly Toushirou needs to look away, his throat suddenly thick. The moment is too private, too intimate, and he shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be here at all.

“We’ll get you out.” Ichigo vows, and the Hatter murmurs in agreement. “I’ll find a way.”

Sunlight blinds Yuzu from Toushirou’s vision, white darkness growing under his eyelids. He inhales peppermint fragrance and then the cold light of morning creeps through the curtains and gently rouses him awake. He doesn’t move, simply closes his eyes once more, and listens to the voice of the radio.

 

*

 

“And then I stepped on his foot.”

“Mm. You do have a tendency to do that, Momo.” Toushirou nods sympathetically, and almost feels the beginning of a smirk as he glances at his shoes. Memories. “Wait. Izuru or Renji?”

“… Renji.” Momo sullenly admits, and it’s easy to picture the embarrassment on her face; the image of it all that is inevitably amusing. Momo’s probably pouting. “I thought I grew out of that habit.”

Toushirou shrugs. That’s the thing he hates about phones, non-verbal actions don’t transition well. “It happens. Apparently I had a hissy fit over a documentary.” He never remembers it that way, but it’s one of his Toushirou-isms, which always cheers his best friend up. “Anyway, would you prefer chocolate cake or peach cake when you arrive?”

Toushirou waits for Momo to process this, weigh and consider the pros and cons, and then declare the practically inevitable outcome. “Chocolate peach cake?”

The corner of his lips twitches into the very essence of a smile. “I’ll figure a way to make that happen.”

 

*

 

Twelve steps backwards, and it’s possible to go anywhere he wants.

Six steps sideways, and he’s somewhere he didn’t expect.

He meets the rubble of a mountain that he once took apart, scattered all over a desert with a blaring sun, tries to rebuild it to no avail, finds the Korrigan girls that try to teach him how to fly and Bysen boys that teach him how to dance, and they ask him what’s wrong, has he heard about the dinner between the White Queen and the Red Queen? He finds a hummingbird named Nanao, an albatross named Lisa, and discovers that if the Caterpillar — who will always be a lecherous Caterpillar with a capital smile — is not around them, it’s best not to mention him. Not even in passing. Lisa narrows her eyes, and Nanao buzzes in a way that makes Toushirou become mute until he has something different to say.

He watches fish fly and sees them converse with pigs with wings, and bemusedly let ladybirds write words on the bark of trees and make patterns on his skin, crawling into the palm of his hand and skitter up to his elbows. He lets the willow trees and oak trees cover him with woolly petals and forgotten leaves, in promise of a dreamless sleep. He sometimes sleeps on the hospital gurneys or leaf beds that the healing sanctuary provides, and the morgens are delightfully deceitful when they guide him away from the spring forest and try to drown him on ocean waters. The sylph with the rabbit hat rescues him, sour faced the entire time, and the purple haired Isane teases her with a lilt of the tongue and the caw of a seagull. Riruka’s apricot flush only darkens, matching her deepening frown.

“Isn’t it strange,” the Mock Turtle muses, wading in the shallow shore, Toushirou wading alongside him, “that avoiding someone is much harder than finding someone?”

The summer breeze warms the curve of his back, and Toushirou shrugs, preferring not to answer while the aquamarine sea glitters under a cloudless sky. If he looks down, he can see a red crab scuttling across the seabed, just daring to pinch his toes, seaweed pushing past behind that crab. If he squints, he can just about see a starfish reclining underwater, sneezing bubbles if there’s too much sand tickling its sensitive pores. The Gryphon told him once that starfish can understand fey, and are excellent translators as long as his head remains in bubbly water, but lose their ability once they lose an arm.

“Oh, you think?” A familiar voice smirks, audibly smirks, his outline shimmering on the ocean waves. Toushirou blinks, not quite processing the incomplete reflection.

“Kurosaki Kaboom!” A splash and two hands push him forwards with a splash, then pull him back with a forceful grab. At least in one direction, though the other is just as steady, if more gentle.

“Always with the alliteration.” The Dormouse rolls his eyes, hand at the back of his neck. There’s a clockwork bracelet on his other hand; something new.

“Well, hey, I wanted Kurosaki Attack. Or, Ambush.” To Toushirou’s left, the Mad Hatter lifts her shoulder and drops it, laconic and lazy; as if she doesn’t care that the hem of her dress is getting wet as long as the sun still smiles. There are claw marks disguised as painful whiskers on the right-side of her cheek. “But, no. Alliteration—”

“Alliteration’s awesome and amazing. Karin came up with the ‘kaboom’ though.” To Toushirou’s right, the March Hare intones, a dimpled smile splayed prettily across her face and her furry bunny ears tweaked in opposite directions. “I’ve missed the sea!” Yuzu says a second later, and jumps about in the seabed, twisting and turning, in order to make the saline water ripple all around her, amid white horses. She scoops water in her hands and throws it up in the air, sprinkling her rabbit ears and rabbit nose with droplets.

“How did you—”

“Secret.” The March Hare puts a finger to her lips, and the whiskers on her cheeks curl at the edges in a manner that usually means a half-smile, a game that no one knows the rules is about to be commenced. It’s a mermaid smile that rests on Yuzu’s face, illuminating without the aid of moonlight. It takes a moment longer to realize that Yuzu wears the steam punk clothes designed on a winter’s day, a pretty mishmash in introverted colours, sky blue instead of grey, pink instead of black, eternal summer instead of eternal autumn. “Are you going to disappear again?”

“I don’t have a choice.” Toushirou sighs and recognises the prickle against his skin that happens before he disappears.

“Don’t be a stranger.” Rubbing her wrists, scratches mostly covered up by a fingerless glove, the Mad Hatter says. Head cocked to the side, there’s something akin to concern nibbling at the corner of chapped lips.

“Yeah,” he nods, and remembers balloons floating in the air and misery on her beautiful face, and how different she seems now, reunited with her family at last. Happier. “Till next time.”

 

*

 

Everyone is hiding from Rukia, who has reached her pre-show jitters two weeks before it happens. The house therefore, has been nicknamed, the hideout, and even Momo, Renji and Izuru stay, feasting on chocolate cake, peach cake, and peach and chocolate cake. And other nutritional food. Yuzu has very nearly finished with her hats — afterwards, she can use her magic to allay Rukia’s nerves, but not until then. With Toushirou, it’s either hit or miss; and Karin often serves to wind Rukia up even when she doesn’t intend it.

“I don’t get it.” Karin frowns as Yuzu talks, her head resting on Toushirou’s collarbone, the night before Rukia’s grand performance — they’ve specifically left this DVD last. Toushirou is playing with her hair, letting the black locks slip past his fingers. “Why doesn’t everyone think that Alice falls in love with the White Rabbit?”

“Huh.” Momo blinks and peers at Yuzu through her lashes, and Toushirou recognizes that look — always apparent before being swept away in romanticism of it all, and he feels vaguely unwell. “It makes sense. Love at first sight, right?” And Yuzu nods, says yes, that’s it, relieved that someone else shares her viewpoint, tension in her shoulders lessoning.

“But she’s seven.” Izuru notes, tone somewhat confused. “Why would she…”

“She gave up her world to see the White Rabbit again. She followed him, and she found him.” Yuzu tries to explain, cheeks flushed pink and she tucks a stray curl behind her ear, and only Momo understands. “She didn’t have to chase him. But she did. That sounds like love to me. To do something following your heart instead of your head.”

The silence is suffocating.

“I don’t know.” Renji says doubtfully. “If there’s love there at all, then it’s pretty twisted. They’re assholes.”

“They’re mad.” Izuru states, as if that simple explanation is enough to cancel out their deluded nature, it excuses their behaviour. “They wind up Alice because they think it’s a fun thing to do.”

Renji snorts. “Like I said, assholes.”

Karin grins lazily, bursting her peppermint bubblegum with her teeth. “Pot, kettle.”

Toushirou can’t breathe. “I’m going to get a drink.” Karin shifts so it’s easier for him to move, and Toushirou can feel her gaze, curious and uncertain, even if he can’t meet it. His feet feel heavy and sluggish as he walks to the kitchen, and if anyone notices something different about the way he walks, then nobody comments.

The door shuts, but it’s not enough to muffle their voices, and so he moves further away, settling to the porch, where the night is cold and the stars are white gold.

 

*

 

“I thought I’d find you here.” The White Knight says with a smile at the end of the harbour, bowing to the swans who bow in return, before galumphing to face him, armour clanking comfortably. “Care to join me?”

He looks genteel and elated, hair still snow bright as Toushirou remembers, and with a nod, Toushirou joins him in the rowing boat, and hastily insists that he should take the oars, partially because he remembers that the White Queen and White King would only end up in circles, partially because that is precisely what happens, and partially Toushirou isn’t nearly at good at pulling the boat into the direction he wants as he’d like to be, so he abandons the oars and lets the river take them wherever it pleases, which is how the White Knight intended for their true course to take place anyway.

The sun flares, the tadpole scurry, and Knight Juushirou and he sit in content silence, waiting, because this is the twilight hour, and the river has a story to show.

Moon-faced pebbles hum underwater, and their bubbled breath rocks the boat to and fro, and silhouettes emerge from the water, the nymphs and the sylphs and the mermaids who swim in saltier waters sing, and play with shadow puppets with flowing hair hidden in darkness and castanets, while hold blue-beating hearts that glow in hues of smoke-lilac in their hands that shine softly until the dawn chorus overrides them with mist-eyed birds and morning chirps. Juushirou touches the sides of his face, and he’s fifteen and seven and twenty all at once, and he wakes up with his smile fresh on his mind and his cool hands linger like ghosts, until Karin nuzzles her nose into the divots of his collarbone, sleeping soundly, and Toushirou reaches out to press play the CD player so he can listen and not get out of bed, just able to succeed by the tips of his fingers.

“I climbed up a mountain, and looked off the edge, at all of the lives that I never have led, there’s one where I stayed with you across the sea, I wonder do you still think of me,” Toushirou says, speaking the lyrics instead of singing along, and Toushirou tugs her close, hand curling at the curve of her hip, and still Karin sleeps, listening to his heartbeat and the bass, “I carry your image always in my head, folded and yellowed and torn at the edge…”

 

*

 

The night before the first ever stage performance, everyone buys Rukia roses.

“Oh, my god.” Rukia laughs with tears in her eyes, and her arms filled with plenty of bouquets; mostly pink roses. The exceptions are Renji’s, red and true, and Karin’s, white and contrary. “You’re all so—”

“Wonderful?” Yuzu says with a smile, as Momo simultaneously says, “horrible?”

“Hufflepuff.” Rukia giggles, and her face is cerise-red, before it is hidden behind crimson and white and pink flowers, “no, Ravenclaw. No, you’re all idiotic Griffindors.”

“Hardly.” Renji objects, who came up with the idea but not the colour scheme, “we’re cunning Slytherins.”

And Rukia, amused by this shower of affection, caressed to her ribcage, agrees.

 

*

 

“Here we go.” Yuzu says, holding up an outfit that’s half-steampunk, and half-Wonderland, designed for him and beautiful, outlined in gold. “This is for you.”

“I… you don’t have to.” Toushirou mutters, as the clothes are pushed into his hands, “thanks.”

Karin presses her hands on the kettle-piano and plays a pretty tune, while Ichigo summons a changing room, their joint effort slightly out of sync. “You’re not seven anymore, you can’t wear things like that here.” Karin rolls her eyes and there’s a shit-eating grin on Ichigo’s face that Toushirou wants to take away but can’t figure out how. “Like it or not, you’re going to have a proper unbirthday party. Requiring proper clothes that the March Hare has made.”

He smirks, because the similarities can be appreciated and not eerie; he takes the clothes and shuts the door. “Fine.”

There is something different about the suit, and not just the lack of a monocle, Toushirou thinks as he slips on the sleeves, but can’t figure out what. It just is, dream woven and cut. But he likes it, and with a flourish, Yuzu cheers as sheep-trees bleat and willow trees sigh blissfully, and she pulls him towards the elongated table, where Rukia and Hisana squabble over garters and glitters, and the fairy dust that floats above them all. Tatsuki arrives in a one-handed handstand in the middle of the table, and then cartwheels off to where the Dormouse is. Together they tether balloons to chairs and on the overalls of a shy gardener, who lifts off the ground, and cannot pull himself down, with just the grip of holding onto his chair. The March Hare quickly offers to help, flustering.

All things must end, Toushirou knows, although the how, the when, the why are unknown. But it’s hard to remember this when Karin, the Mad Hatter, takes his arm and kisses his cheek, and sets him beside her, and Tatsuki begins to regale a tale of the house of cards and battles of chess, and Ichigo is laughing and insisting that the Duchess is in some dire need of amusement.

 

*

 

“Oh, shit.” Karin says as she helps Toushirou with his tie, the zip of her red dress undone. “Shit, she’s going to kill us.”

“We’re not going to be late.” Toushirou assures her, although he can hear a shriek of concern through the wall. Momo, he guesses. “We’re fine. Turn.”

“Yeah, but can you imagine if we’re not?” Karin grins, and dutifully turns, Toushirou deftly pulling the zip, and teasing her with the pressure of his fingertips on her silk dress, “then she wouldn’t need to be in character. Rukia would just say, off with your heads, and be done with it.”

“Guys, hurry up!” Renji calls, standing at the bottom of the stairs. “Everyone else is here!”

“Ready!” Karin yells, and nearly trips down the staircase, if not for Toushirou grabbing her arm. “Ready.” She says at the bottom in a calmer voice, smoothing out the creases. Toushirou feels absolutely ridiculous and proud, and tugs at his suit. “Let’s go.”

He takes her hand, and all together, they traipse outside into the car to get to the theatre, bickering and armed with a single rose for the Queen of Hearts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter titles taken from C'mon by Panic! at the Disco and fun.


End file.
